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Comparison of adsorption behavior of PCDD/Fs on carbon nanotubes and activated carbons in a bench-scale dioxin generating system

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Abstract

Porous carbon-based materials are commonly used to remove various organic and inorganic pollutants from gaseous and liquid effluents and products. In this study, the adsorption of dioxins on both activated carbons and multi-walled carbon nanotube was internally compared, via series of bench scale experiments. A laboratory-scale dioxin generator was applied to generate PCDD/Fs with constant concentration (8.3 ng I-TEQ/Nm3). The results confirm that high-chlorinated congeners are more easily adsorbed on both activated carbons and carbon nanotubes than low-chlorinated congeners. Carbon nanotubes also achieved higher adsorption efficiency than activated carbons even though they have smaller BET-surface. Carbon nanotubes reached the total removal efficiency over 86.8 % to be compared with removal efficiencies of only 70.0 and 54.2 % for the two other activated carbons tested. In addition, because of different adsorption mechanisms, the removal efficiencies of carbon nanotubes dropped more slowly with time than was the case for activated carbons. It could be attributed to the abundant mesopores distributed in the surface of carbon nanotubes. They enhanced the pore filled process of dioxin molecules during adsorption. In addition, strong interactions between the two benzene rings of dioxin molecules and the hexagonal arrays of carbon atoms in the surface make carbon nanotubes have bigger adsorption capacity.

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Acknowledgments

This work supported by the National Key Basic Research Development Program of China (973 program, no. 2011CB201500), the Specialized Research Fund for the Doctoral Program of Higher Education of China (no. 20120101110099), and the Fund of State Key Laboratory of Clean Energy Utilization of Zhejiang University (no. ZJUCEU2012009).

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All authors have no competing financial interests.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Clean Energy Utilization, The College of Energy Engineering, Zhejiang University, Zheda Road 38#, Hangzhou, 310027, China

    Xujian Zhou, Xiaodong Li, Shuaixi Xu, Xiyuan Zhao, Mingjiang Ni & Kefa Cen

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  1. Xujian Zhou
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  2. Xiaodong Li
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  3. Shuaixi Xu
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  4. Xiyuan Zhao
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  5. Mingjiang Ni
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  6. Kefa Cen
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Correspondence to Xiaodong Li.

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Responsible editor: Leif Kronberg

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Zhou, X., Li, X., Xu, S. et al. Comparison of adsorption behavior of PCDD/Fs on carbon nanotubes and activated carbons in a bench-scale dioxin generating system. Environ Sci Pollut Res 22, 10463–10470 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-015-4180-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-015-4180-9

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