Adsorptive removal of synthetic plastic components bisphenol-A and solvent black-3 dye from single and binary solutions using pristine pinecone biochar
Graphical abstract
Introduction
Water contamination remains an enduring environmental challenge globally owing to the growing population and technological advancements in the industrial sector. The endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs) are often detected in soil and water bodies that are recognized as emerging contaminants accountable for disrupting the functioning of estrogenic or androgenic activities (Liu et al., 2020). Among EDCs, bisphenol-A (BPA) is responsible for interrupting the normal functioning of hormones, inducing genotoxic, hepatotoxic, teratogenic, immunotoxic, carcinogenic, mutagenic, and neurotoxic effects (Noszczyńska et al., 2021). BPA is the most important industrial additive primarily used as a monomer to produce unsaturated polyester-styrene resins, flame retardants, polycarbonate, and epoxy resins. It is also widely used in food can coating, adhesives, paints, lotions, etc (Mohan et al., 2020; Li et al., 2019). However, BPA production units, plastic industry effluent, landfilled plastic waste leachate, paint industries, and e-waste remains the major source of BPA pollution (Das et al., 2018). Similarly, synthetic plastic wastes can be breakdown naturally into the environment and leach BPA, toxic dyes, and nonyl-phenol as the components of plastic that can enter the food chain (Kyrila et al., 2021). Plastic production activities release the effluent containing up to 100 mg L−1 BPA, although BPA in water at LC50 or EC50 of 10 mg L−1 is highly toxic to crustaceans (Mohan et al., 2020).
Although industrial wastewater comprises a mixture of contaminants, however, most of the literature published on pollutant removal from the water aims at single-component removal. Therefore, this work was extended towards BPA and solvent black-3 (SB3) dye removal from single and binary solutions. SB3 dye is a fat-soluble, non-fluorescent, thermostable, bluish-black colored dye mainly used as a coloring agent in plastics industries, mineral oil, pyrotechnic, and lacquers industry (Hunger et al., 2000). In the plastic industry, this dye is used for the coloration of polystyrene, integration in polymethacrylate and unsaturated polyester casting resins, and highly transparent colorings (Hunger et al., 2000). Azo dye has low biodegradability and prolonged persistence in the ecosystem due to azo chains (-NN-) in molecular structure (Gurav et al., 2021a). As a response to BPA and dye pollution, several strategies like biological, electrochemical, advanced oxidation, phytoremediation, coagulation, membrane technologies, adsorption, and photocatalytic degradation were reported (Gurav et al., 2021a; Hernández-Abreu et al., 2020; Mpatani et al., 2021). The adsorption technology has been considered as an effective approach for pollutant removal owing to the cost-effectiveness, higher adsorption capacity, eco-friendly, easy application and regeneration, and no production of lethal intermediates (Hernández-Abreu et al., 2020). Activated carbon is the most extensively studied adsorbent material for the removal of toxic chemicals from water bodies. Nevertheless, the higher production cost ranging from 800 to 5000 USD/tonne, use of non-renewable feedstock like fossil coal, high energy requirement for activation, and use of harmful chemicals like potassium hydroxide and phosphoric acid for activation has restricted their broad applications to treat wastewater at the viable scale (Kozyatnyk et al., 2021). Consequently, developing eco-friendly and low-cost adsorbents using easily available waste feedstock was extremely required to create a suitable and sustainable wastewater treatment system.
Biochar (BC) is a highly stable carbon-rich material obtained after pyrolysis of biomass at a temperature between 350 °C and 750 °C under oxygen limiting conditions (Gurav et al., 2021b; Lu and Chen, 2018). Various low-cost feedstocks like forestry and agriculture biomass, livestock waste, food processing waste, seaweed, and paper mill waste are used for BC production (Vyavahare et al., 2019; Suryawanshi et al., 2021). The pyrolysis procedure can be categorized as slow, intermediated, and fast pyrolysis based on the heating time of feedstock to obtain different amounts of syngas, bio-oil, and biochar (Bianco et al., 2021). BC has obtained great potential in immobilization of environmental contaminants, detoxification of wastewater, soil amelioration, carbon sequestration, electrode materials, catalysts, etc (Bhatia et al., 2020; Wang and Wang, 2019). The key factors like higher porosity and surface area, numerous functional groups on the surface, excellent aromaticity, simple surface modifications, high stability, and lower production cost have attracted researchers to explore BC in wastewater management (Deng et al., 2021; Vyavahare et al., 2021; Gurav et al., 2021b).
Therefore, the existing study was focused on the adsorptive removal of BPA and SB3 dye from single and binary solutions using pinecone biochar (PC-BC). Characterization of the adsorbents, assessment of adsorption kinetics, and isotherm models to elucidate BPA and SB3 dye adsorption mechanisms. Furthermore, the effect of pH, temperature, humic acid (HA), and salinity on the BPA removal was also studied.
Section snippets
Screening of different biochar for BPA removal
Pristine and modified (H2SO4, KOH, HNO3) BCs derived from the waste wine bottle cork, pinewood, pinecone, Eucheuma algae, Spirulina algae, banana pseudostem, coffee waste, lignin waste, grape pomace, and soybean meal were screened for BPA removal from water. The adsorption experiment was performed by adding 0.1 g BC to 100 mg L−1 BPA solution and incubated at 25 °C for 60 min. Among the tested BCs, pinecone BC demonstrated higher BPA removal was selected for further investigations.
Pinecone biochar production
The pinecones
Investigating different biochars for BPA removal
Twenty pristine and modified (H2SO4, HNO3, KOH) BCs derived from various biomass were assessed for BPA removal. The BPA adsorption efficiencies of BCs were in following order: pinecone BC (750 °C) > banana pseudostem-HNO3 BC (700 °C) > pinecone-HNO3 BC (750 °C) > pinewood BC (700 °C) > pinecone-H2SO4 BC (750 °C) > Spirulina algae BC (750 °C) > banana pseudostem BC (700 °C) > Eucheuma algae BC (600 °C) > banana pseudostem-H2SO4 (700 °C) > coffee waste BC (750 °C) > lignin waste BC
Conclusion
The pinecone BC produced at 750 °C demonstrated BPA and SB3 dye removal from single and binary solutions. Elovich, pseudo-second-order, and two-compartment were the best-fitting kinetics models for the adsorption of BPA and SB3 dye. Besides, the Langmuir isotherm model supported the BPA and SB3 dye removal with maximum adsorption capability of 38.39 mg g−1 and 346.86 mg g−1. Adsorption of BPA and SB3 dye on PC-BC750 was a fast process through the dominance of chemisorption process with
Credit author statement
Ranjit Gurav: Conceptualization, Methodology, Writing-original draft. Shashi Kant Bhatia: Writing-review & editing. Tae-Rim Choi: Formal analysis. Hyun Joong Kim: Visualization. Yong-Keun Choi: Formal analysis. Hong-Ju Lee: Resources. Sion Ham: Validation. Jang Yeon Cho: Formal analysis. Sang Hyun Kim: Validation. Sang Ho Lee: Writing-review & editing. Jeonghee Yun: Resources. Yung-Hun Yang: Writing-review & editing, Funding acquisition, Supervision.
Declaration of competing interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
Acknowledgment
This study was supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) (NRF-2019M3E6A1103979) and the Research Program to solve the social issues of the NRF funded by the Ministry of Science and ICT (2017M3A9E4077234). This work was also supported by the R&D Program of MOTIE/KEIT (20009508 and 20014350) and with the support of the R&D Program for Forest Science Technology [grant number 2020261C10-2022-AC02] provided by Korea Forest Service (Korea Forestry Promotion Institute).
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