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Biomass ash pyrolyzed from municipal sludge and its adsorption performance toward tetracycline: effect of pyrolysis temperature and KOH activation

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Abstract

Large amount of municipal sludge is difficult to handle; its resource utilization is an effective measure. In this study, the municipal sludge from sewage treatment plant was pyrolyzed without gas protection at different temperatures and potassium hydroxide (KOH) concentrations for activation. The pyrolysis products, named biomass ash, with higher surface area and enriched pore structures could be obtained at the pyrolysis temperature of 773 K. Moreover, the KOH activation for raw municipal sludge could further increase the surface area of the pyrolysis biomass ash. The maximum specific surface area was 44.71 m2/g, which was obtained under 2 mol/L KOH activation before pyrolysis at 773 K. And in this situation, the obtained pyrolysis biomass ash as adsorbent showed the maximum adsorption capacity of 50.75 mg/g toward tetracycline (TC). Moreover, the TC adsorption onto pyrolysis biomass ash obtained under various conditions followed the pseudo-second-order kinetic model. Adsorption thermodynamics analysis suggested the TC adsorption onto the pyrolysis biomass ash with no pre-activation was mainly due to the multi-molecule heterogeneous adsorption, while the TC adsorption onto pyrolysis biomass ash pretreated through the activation of KOH followed the monomer adsorption mechanism. This different adsorption mechanism was largely related to the pore structure, polarity, and aromaticity of the adsorbent.

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Funding

This work has been financially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (21908220), the Doctoral Fund of Ministry of Education of China (2019M663139, 2020M672854), the Natural Science Foundation of Guangdong Province of China (2020A1515010364), and Natural Science Foundation of Guangzhou (202102020825).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Green Catalysis and Chemical Reaction Engineering of Hunan Province, School of Chemical Engineering, Xiangtan University, Xiangtan, 411105, China

    Chunmu Yu

  2. College of Environmental and Chemical Engineering, Foshan University, Foshan, 528000, China

    Chunmu Yu, Xiaojuan Chen, Ning Li, Yiqi Lai & Xiangyu Lai

  3. CAS Key Laboratory of Renewable Energy, Guangzhou Institute of Energy Conversion, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Guangzhou, 510650, China

    Ning Li

  4. College of Transportation and Civil Architecture, Foshan University, Foshan, 528000, China

    Jieming Chen & Liang Yao

  5. School of Food Science and Engineering, Foshan University, Foshan, 528000, China

    Yu Zhou & Kaihong Lu

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  1. Chunmu Yu
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Contributions

CY: investigation, writing—original draft. XC: project administration, funding acquisition, writing—review and editing. NL: visualization, funding acquisition, writing—review and editing. JC: investigation. LY: resources. YZ: resources. KL: investigation. YL: investigation. XL: resources.

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Correspondence to Ning Li.

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Yu, C., Chen, X., Li, N. et al. Biomass ash pyrolyzed from municipal sludge and its adsorption performance toward tetracycline: effect of pyrolysis temperature and KOH activation. Environ Sci Pollut Res 29, 81383–81395 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-022-21366-9

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