Fabrication of magnetic mesoporous carbon and its application for adsorptive removal of 2,4,6-trichlorophenol (TCP) from aqueous solution

Abstract

Magnetic mesoporous (MMP) carbon has been successfully synthesized by using Fe₃O₄ NPs, CaCO₃ and dopamine as cores, template, and carbon precursor, respectively. The synthetic procedure of MMP carbon is simple, low-cost and involves no organic solvents. The generated MMP carbon has a large surface area and strong magnetism. MMP carbon was used to remove 2,4,6-trichlorophenol (TCP) from water samples. The results show that adsorption equilibrium was observed within 10 h, and the kinetics can be described by a pseudo-second-order kinetic model. TCP adsorption is not affected by ionic strength and increases with temperature and initial concentration. When the TCP initial concentrations are 10 and 100 mg L⁻¹, the adsorption capacities are 117 and 610 mg g⁻¹, respectively, which are much higher than those achieved from other adsorbents. These results indicate that most of the adsorption sites on the MMP carbon are available for TCP due to its relatively large pore size.