NaOH-modified mesoporous biochar derived from tea residue for methylene Blue and Orange II removal
Graphical abstract
Introduction
In the progress of using water resources, human activities inevitably bring some organic synthetic dyes into the water environment, which not only reduces the utilization value of water, but also aggravates the pollution of water resources and ecological environment (Carvalho and Santos, 2016; Barbosa et al., 2016). The textile, dye, leather, cosmetics, and the paper industry produce wastewater from the coloring process that contains dyes and pigments. Methylene blue (MB) and orange II (OR-II), which have complex aromatic molecular structures, are widely used in textile printing and dyeing industry, and may cause various diseases such as kidney, brain, liver and central nervous system dysfunction (Lazar, 2005). Therefore, it is very important to exploit a high-effective method for MB and OR-II polluted effluent treatment.
Adsorption (Li et al., 2013; Liu et al., 2014), membrane method (Kazemi et al., 2013), coagulation (Morshedi et al., 2013), flocculation (Yang et al., 2013), and galvanic oxidation (Raghu et al., 2009) were usually utilized to remove dyes from wastewater. Among these techniques, adsorption is widely applied to purify the industrial effluent because of its high adsorption efficiency, low operating cost, easy recycling and alternative adsorbents. Among various adsorbents, carbon-based materials have been identified as an ideal candidate for pollutant removal and potential application due to its controllable structures and abundant functional groups (Heidari et al., 2019; Liu et al., 2015). Compared to activated carbon, biochar is less carbonized with more oxygen-containing functional groups that providing more binding sites for pollutants uptake and stable carbon retained that minimizing the emission of greenhouse gases. Moreover, the organic-loaded biochar can serve as nutrients for subsequent application as a soil amendment or recover bio-energy (Laird et al., 2009; Kong et al., 2014; Lehmann et al., 2006). Thus, from a holistic environmental pivot, the application of biowaste-derived biochar adsorbent was considered as a sustainable pathway (Lehmann et al., 2006).
In recent years, researchers have used cheap and renewable biomass precursors to produce biochar, such as corn straw (Tan et al., 2020), scallion sheathings (Song et al., 2019), tea residue (Trinh et al., 2020), reed (Wang et al., 2019a), waste rice husk (Han et al., 2020) sawdust and cow dung (Feng et al., 2013), urtica (Peydayesh et al., 2015), and platanus orientalis leaf powder (Peydayesh and Rahbar-Kelishami, 2015). As a popular beverage around the world, the tea is produced about 3,000,000 tons annually in China, and the huge consumption of tea produces tea residue on a large scale (Chen et al., 2020). As a solid waste and biomass supplement, the tea residue contains various components, such as tea polyphenols, natural pigments and proteins, which enhanced it as a great potential adsorbent material for pollutant uptake (Tang et al., 2019Wang and Wang, 2019).
Compared with pure biochar, NaOH modified biochar improved reportedly the mesoporous structure and exhibited higher adsorption capacity (Guo et al., 2012). Choudhary, etc. employed the cladodes of cactus branch to prepare the renewable adsorbent by surface modification of biochar with NaOH, which enhanced the quantity of oxygen-containing surface functional groups, thus improving the surface alkalinity of biochar, to further improve the adsorption of malachite green, Cu2+ and Ni2+ (Choudhary et al., 2020). The cacao shell waste was utilized to prepare biochar by using one-step or two-step NaOH activation for the treatment of a mixture of bright green, rhodamine B and methyl orange (Córdova et al., 2020). As far as we know, there are few researches on the removal of MB and OR-II from aqueous solution by taking tea residue as a raw material and NaOH chemical modification to produce biochar adsorbent. The preparation of biochar from waste tea residue by pyrolysis can simultaneously realize the high value utilization of solid waste and address the environmental issues.
Therefore, the main purposes of this study are: (i) to evaluate the possibility of waste tea residue conversion into biochar, (ii) to investigate the effects of NaOH introduction and pyrolysis temperature on the structure and adsorption capacity of biochar toward MB and OR-II, and (iii) to explore the possible adsorption mechanism of MB and OR-II onto BH700-10 for better understanding the adsorption process.
Section snippets
Material
Tea was selected as biomass raw material and obtained from An’Xi County (Fujian, China). The samples were pretreated by air drying and crushing, washed with deionized water, and dried in a dying oven at 90 °C for 12 h and then cooled to room temperature. The dried tea powder was then grounded and sieved through 100 meshes to obtain the tea residue powder (TRP).
The purities of NaOH, HCl, methylene blue and orange II were in A.R. grade and purchased from Sinopharm Chemical Reagent.
Synthesis of NaOH modified biochar
As a
Effects of NaOH:TRP ratio and pyrolysis temperature on MB and OR-II adsorption
According to the literature reported (Dinh et al., 2020), pyrolysis temperature plays a crucial role on the structure and properties of biochar. Generally, under oxygen restriction atmosphere and high temperature, the functional groups of tea biomass decompose gradually and release some low molecular weight gaseous compounds, such as water, methane, carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide, which could be absorbed by NaOH. At the same time, the formation of H2O and CO2 in the system play a positive
Conclusion
A novel BH700-10 biochar was successfully synthesized by pyrolysis of tea waste with the assistance of NaOH, and exhibited an abundant mesoporous structure with the average pore diameter of 3.67 nm and graphitized orderly carbon layer. BH700-10 was proved to be an efficient adsorbent to remove MB and OR-II from aqueous solution. The optimal adsorption conditions for MB and OR-II were initial pH of 10 and 2, respectively, and contact time of 60 min at a NaOH/TP mass ratio of 10% w/w and
Declaration of Competing Interest
The authors report no declarations of interest.
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