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Synthesis of zero-valent iron/biochar by carbothermal reduction from wood waste and iron mud for removing rhodamine B

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Abstract

This study proposes a new process to synthesize zero-valent iron/biochar (Fe0-BC) by carbothermal reduction using wood waste and iron mud as raw materials under different temperature. The characterization results showed that the Fe0-BC synthesized at 1200 °C (Fe0-BC-1200) possessed favorable adsorption capacity with the specific surface area of 103.18 m2/g and that the zero-valent iron (Fe0) particles were uniformly dispersed on the biochar surface. The removal efficiency of rhodamine B (RB) was determined to evaluate the performance of the prepared Fe0-BC. Fe0-BC-1200 presented the best performance on RB removal, which mainly ascribes to that more Fe0 particles generated at higher temperature. The equilibrium adsorption capacity reached 49.93 mg/g when the initial RB concentration and the Fe0-BC-1200 dosage were 100 mg/L and 2 g/L, respectively, and the pseudo-second-order model was suitable to fit the removal experimental data. LCMC and XRD analyses revealed that the removal mechanism included the physical adsorption of biochar and the redox reaction of Fe0. Moreover, copper existing in the iron mud was also reduced to Cu0, which was beneficial to catalyze the oxidation of iron; the degradation of RB was promoted at the same time.

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Acknowledgements and funding

The authors are grateful for the support of the National Key R&D Program of China (Grant No. 2108YFC1902906), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 51674018), and the Postdoctoral Sustentation Fund, China (Grant No. 2018M631488).

Availability of data and materials

The datasets used and analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Environment, Tsinghua University, Beijing, 100084, China

    Chao Chen, Jianguo Liu, Chao Gen, Qin Liu, Xuetao Zhu, Wenzhi Qi & Fan Wang

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  1. Chao Chen
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  2. Jianguo Liu
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  3. Chao Gen
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  4. Qin Liu
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  5. Xuetao Zhu
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  6. Wenzhi Qi
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  7. Fan Wang
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Contributions

Jianguo Liu contributed to the conception of the study; Chao Chen, Chao Gen, and Wenzhi Qi performed the experiment; Chao Chen performed the data analyses and wrote the manuscript; Qin Liu, Xuetao Zhu, and Fang Wang helped perform the analysis with constructive discussions. All authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Jianguo Liu.

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Chen, C., Liu, J., Gen, C. et al. Synthesis of zero-valent iron/biochar by carbothermal reduction from wood waste and iron mud for removing rhodamine B. Environ Sci Pollut Res 28, 48556–48568 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-021-13962-y

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