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Study on adsorption properties and mechanism of sodium hydroxide–modified ball-milled biochar to dislodge lead(II) and MB from water

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Abstract

Heavy metal pollution and organic wastewater treatment have attracted extensive attention of researchers. Adsorption method is widely used in wastewater treatment because of its low price and high efficiency. As a natural, cheap biomass material, bamboo powder is of great significance to develop it into an economical and efficient biochar for wastewater treatment. A new type of ball-milled biochar (BMBC) adsorbent was prepared by pyrolysis of bamboo powder under an inert atmosphere, activated with sodium hydroxide solution and ball milling. The specific surface area of BMBC increased from 29.21 to 60.49 m2/g, and the carboxyl and hydroxyl groups on the pyrolyzed carbon surface also obviously increased after ball milling. The results of bath adsorption experiments showed that BMBC exhibited excellent adsorption capacity towards both Pb(II) (170.52 mg/g) and methylene blue (MB, 419.11 mg/g) at 308 K. Based on a systematic study on the effect of various working conditions (including concentration, temperature, pH value, and ionic strength), it was demonstrated that pseudo-second-order kinetic equation might match the adsorption process (R2 > 0.9934) and Langmuir model (R2 > 0.9924); adsorptions were thermodynamically endothermic and occurred spontaneously. The ball milled alkalization-modified bamboo biochar can potentially be applied to remove heavy metal and cationic pollutants from wastewater.

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Funding

The research had been approved by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 32271528, U1932126) and the Zhejiang Province “Vanguard” and “Leading Goose” Research and Development Project (Grant No. 2022C02036).

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Haiyang Ye: material preparation, experimental section, analysis, and writing—original draft. Kun Yu: conceptualization, methodology, and writing—original draft. Haiyang Ye and Kun Yu have the same contribution to this paper. Bing Li: writing, modifying, and funding acquisition. Jianzhong Guo: conception, experimental design, and writing—review and editing. All authors checked and agreed the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Jianzhong Guo.

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Highlights

• The ball-milled biochar was prepared by pyrolytic carbonization of bamboo powder and activated by NaOH and ball milling process.

• The adsorption forces might include cation-π interactions, electrostatic attraction, ion exchange, and surface complexation.

• BMBC was an effective and promising sorbent to eliminate heavy metal and cationic dye ions from aqueous solution.

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Ye, H., Yu, K., Li, B. et al. Study on adsorption properties and mechanism of sodium hydroxide–modified ball-milled biochar to dislodge lead(II) and MB from water. Biomass Conv. Bioref. (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13399-023-03740-w

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