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Highly adsorptive mesoporous carbon from biomass using molten-salt route

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Abstract

A general, simple, eco-friendly, and scalable route of obtaining highly adsorptive activated carbon from biomass using ZnCl2 molten-salt process is reported. Upon using three biomasses (pine wood chips, banana peels, and pine leaves) as the model carbon precursors, the molten-salt process yields different porous structures of carbons with a specific surface area up to 1624.8 m2 g−1. The properties of the three obtained activated carbons were characterized by SEM, TEM, XRD, FT-IR, and BET. The results show that all of them are amorphous with oxygen-containing functional groups on the surface. Besides, they exhibit remarkable adsorption capacity for removal of methylene blue of 425, 225, and 300 mg g−1, respectively. Since various biomasses can be transformed into activated carbons, molten-salt route is proved general and feasible, which offers a simple and environmentally sound way for transforming low-cost and abundant biomass to highly adsorptive and valuable activated carbon. This method also opens up a new avenue toward the application of biomass in various fields.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 21271158 and 21576247) and Postdoctoral Research Sponsorship of Henan Province (Grant No. 2015015).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Chemical Engineering, Zhengzhou University, Zhengzhou, 450001, People’s Republic of China

    Weixiao Kong, Feng Zhao, Huijuan Guan, Yafei Zhao & Bing Zhang

  2. Henan Institute of Engineering, Zhengzhou, 451191, People’s Republic of China

    Hongsong Zhang

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  1. Weixiao Kong
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  2. Feng Zhao
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  3. Huijuan Guan
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  4. Yafei Zhao
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  5. Hongsong Zhang
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  6. Bing Zhang
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Correspondence to Yafei Zhao or Hongsong Zhang.

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Kong, W., Zhao, F., Guan, H. et al. Highly adsorptive mesoporous carbon from biomass using molten-salt route. J Mater Sci 51, 6793–6800 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10853-016-9966-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10853-016-9966-8

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