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A green synthesized medicine residue carbon-based iron composite for the removal of chromium (VI) and cadmium (II): Performance, kinetics and mechanism

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Abstract

Nowadays, clean-up of heavy metals from wastewaters using waste residue carbon-based material has received increasing attention. In this work, a novel Chinese medicine residue carbon-based nano zero-valent iron composite (CM-nZVI) had been successfully prepared using the combined Chinese medicine residue, FeCl3 and green tea extract. Cr(VI) and/ or Cd(II) removal in water by the CM-nZVI were systematacially investigated with a series of batch experiments. The most relevant findings indicated the adsorption efficiecy and capacity of Cr(VI) by CM-nZVI were respecitvely nearly 98% and 26 mg/g under optimized reaction conditions. The negative influences of the cations on the Cr(VI) removal followed the order of Al3+ > Ca2+ > Mg2+ Na+ > K+, but the anions followed the order of HCO3− > PO43− > NO3− > Cl− > SO42−. Humic acid (HA) and ionic strength with high concentrations severely inhibited Cr(VI) removal. The Cr(VI) adsorption on CM-nZVI fitted well by the pseudo-second-order kinetic and Langmuir models. A monolayer endothermic chemisorption occurred on Cr(VI) adsorption over CM-nZVI, and Cr(VI) removal by CM-nZVI primarily involved in the absorption, reduction, precipitation and complexation processes. Both Cr(VI) and Cd(II) removals had been achieved by CM-nZVI at their low concentrations. This CM-nZVI showed a better reusability proprity for Cr(VI) and Cd(II) removal with the regeneration of CM-nZVI through simple pickling. The outcomes of this work show that CM-nZVI could be used an effective material for heavy metals removal from water.

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Funding

This work was supported by the Special project in key areas of Guangdong Province Ordinary Universities (Nos.2020ZDZX1003 and 2021ZDJS007), the Key Realm Research and Development Program of Guangdong Province (No.2020B1111350002), Xingning Meat Pigeon Provincial Agricultural Industrial Park Project (No.D122222G913), the Guangdong Provincial Special Fund for Modern Agriculture Industry Technology Innovation Teams (No.2019KJ140), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos.U22A20606 and 21407155) and Zhongkai Graduate Science and Technology Innovation Fund Project (No.KJCX2023023).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Guangdong Hospital of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Guangzhou, 510120, China

    Fa-Ming Diao

  2. College of Resources and Environment, Zhongkai University of Agriculture and Engineering, Guangzhou, 510225, China

    Man-Li Chen, Lin-Yin Tong, Ying-Nan Chen & Zeng-Hui Diao

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  1. Fa-Ming Diao
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  2. Man-Li Chen
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  3. Lin-Yin Tong
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  5. Zeng-Hui Diao
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Contributions

Conceptualization, Investigation and Methodology, Fa-Ming Diao; Investigation, Methodology and Software, Man-Li Chen; Investigation and Software, Lin-Yin Tong and Ying-Nan Chen; Conceptualization, Writing-original draft, Writing review &editing and Supervision, Zeng-Hui Diao.

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Correspondence to Zeng-Hui Diao.

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Diao, FM., Chen, ML., Tong, LY. et al. A green synthesized medicine residue carbon-based iron composite for the removal of chromium (VI) and cadmium (II): Performance, kinetics and mechanism. Environ Sci Pollut Res 30, 84011–84022 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-023-28429-5

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