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Competitive adsorption characteristics of VOCs and water vapor by activated carbon prepared from Fe/N-doped pistachio shell

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Abstract

Various materials have been developed to capture volatile organic compounds (VOCs) to mitigate air pollution. However, sorbent materials with excellent resistance to water are rare. Here, several Fe/N-doped activated carbons (ACs) have been prepared to capture VOCs in humid environments. The ACs were analyzed by various characterization techniques, such as BET, SEM, XPS, XRD, FTIR, and Raman. The results showed that Fe/N doping resulted in the specific surface area of the ACs increasing by 500 to 1000 m2 g−1, the average pore size increasing to approximately 2 nm, improved mesoporous structure, higher graphitization, lower hydrophilicity, and polarity. The VOCs adsorption performance of the ACs was evaluated by static and dynamic adsorption experiments. The uptake of toluene and ethyl acetate by ACs was enhanced to 224 mg g−1 and 135 mg g−1, respectively. And ACs were able to maintain 70 to 80% VOCs adsorption capacity for VOCs at 80% relative humidity. Furthermore, the microscopic mechanisms were investigated by the grand canonical Monte Carlo method (GCMC). The highly graphitized structure and the N functional groups favored the VOC adsorption process and discouraged the adsorption of water vapor. This work affirmed the dominance of Fe/N-doped carbon, which will contribute to the evolution of water-resistant VOCs adsorbent materials.

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Funding

This research was financially supported by Postgraduate Research & Practice Innovation Program of Jiangsu Province (KYCX22_0207) and the National Key Research and Development Program of China (2018YFB0605200).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Energy Thermal Conversion and Control of Ministry of Education, School of Energy and Environment, Southeast University, Nanjing, 210096, China

    Tangying Cheng, Jinjin Li, Xiuwei Ma & Linjun Yang

  2. National-Local Joint Engineering Research Center of Heavy Metals Pollutants Control and Resource Utilization, Nanchang Hangkong University, Nanchang, 330063, China

    Lei Zhou

  3. School of Energy and Mechanical Engineering, Nanjing Normal University, Nanjing, Jiangsu, 210042, People’s Republic of China

    Hao Wu

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  1. Tangying Cheng
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  2. Jinjin Li
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  4. Linjun Yang
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  5. Lei Zhou
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  6. Hao Wu
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Contributions

Tangying Cheng: conceptualization, methodology, software, data curation, formal analysis, investigation, resources, writing—original draft, writing—review and editing, funding acquisition. Jinjin Li: methodology, investigation, writing—review and editing. Xiuwei Ma: methodology, investigation, writing—review and editing. Linjun Yang: conceptualization, resources, writing—review and editing, supervision, project administration, funding acquisition. Lei Zhou: conceptualization, writing—review & editing, supervision. Hao Wu: conceptualization, writing—review and editing, supervision.

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Correspondence to Linjun Yang.

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Cheng, T., Li, J., Ma, X. et al. Competitive adsorption characteristics of VOCs and water vapor by activated carbon prepared from Fe/N-doped pistachio shell. Environ Sci Pollut Res 30, 91262–91275 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-023-28509-6

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