Abstract
Spent carbon cathode (SCC) is a hazardous waste from the aluminum electrolysis industry. It is commonly used as a carbon source in the current disposal and recovery strategies, such as combustion, or as a reductant for smelting. The novelty of this study is to propose a strategy for recycling SCC as a graphite resource and to investigate the unique structural characteristics and adsorption properties of graphene oxide produced from this low temperature graphitized carbon. The adsorption kinetics and isotherms of SCC-GO on methylene blue (MB) were studied and compared with the GO prepared from natural flake graphite (NFG) and artificial graphite (AG). The results show that SCC-GO exhibits the highest adsorption rate and adsorption capacity (647.83 mg/g) for MB, which is much higher than NFG-GO (451.22 mg/g) and AG-GO (533.12 mg/g). The analysis of the spectroscopy and morphology confirmed that SCC-GO has a high degree of crystal defects, oxidation, and surface wrinkle. Overall, this study reveals the unique structure of SCC-GO and highlights its significant scientific and application potential as an ultra-low temperature graphitized carbon. This research is also significant for recycling aluminum electrolytic cathode solid waste in the form of a graphite source.
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Funding
The fellowship of the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (No. 2022M722872) supported this work. This paper was also funded by the Natural Science Foundation of Henan (No. 232300421320), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 52204296), and the Henan Province Science and Technology Research Project (China) (No. 222102320398).
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PL: methodology, resources, writing—original draft. YC: conceptualization, data curation, formal analysis, resources, writing—original draft, writing—review and editing. HZ: software, writing—review and editing. XB: writing—review and editing. LW: writing—review and editing. XL: conceptualization, supervision, writing—review and editing.
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Li, ., Chen, Y., Zeng, H. et al. Structure characteristics and adsorption performance of graphene oxide prepared by spent carbon cathode—an ultra-low temperature graphitized carbon material. Environ Sci Pollut Res 30, 120515–120527 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-023-30884-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-023-30884-z