Cadmium and Mb are considered hazardous pollutants in water on account of their non-biodegradable properties and toxicities. Recently, many nanomaterials and methods have attracted broad attention because of their large surface area and special structure. The modification of nanomaterials with functional groups is promising to achieve high adsorption performance.
Recently, a study team, led by associate Prof. Kong lingtao and Prof. Liu jinhuai in Institute of Intelligent Machines (IIM), Hefei Institutes of Physical Science, made a new progress in removing micro-pollutants in water. The researchers developed an eco-friendly graphitic carbon nitride (g-C3N4) nanosheet adsorbent to remove Cadmium ions (Cd2+) and Methylene blue (Mb) from aqueous solution. The paper was accepted for publication by Chemosphere (Chemosphere 171 (2017) 192-201) and reviewers thought highly of this paper.
Researchers presented a simple and large yield synthesis route for g-C3N4 through the pyrolysis of urea under ambient pressure and the pyrolysis-generated self-supporting gas surrounding. The g-C3N4 consists of highly ordered tri-s-triazine (C6N7) units, which enable easy stacking via hydrophobic effect and interaction. It is proved by a large number of experiments that the new material has high adsorption capacity and it can remove Cd2+ and Mb pollutants in water efficiently and rapidly, there will be no secondary pollution with regeneration recycle.
The researchers further explained the mechanisms for pollutants adsorption on g-C3N4. The study indicates that g-C3N4 is a promising adsorbent which can potentially be applied for the removal of extensive pollutants from aqueous solution.
This work was supported by the National Natural Scientific Program-Nanoscience and Nanotechnology (Grant No. 2011CB933700), the Natural Science Foundation of China, and key technologies R & D Program of Anhui Province.
Fig 1. a) The schematic of pollutants adsorption onto g-C3N4,b) TEM image of the g-C3N4, Cd2+ ions (c) and MB (d) adsorption onto g-C3N4 at different temperatures
Article link: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0045653516318057
Title: A 2D-g-C3N4 nanosheet as an eco-friendly adsorbent for various environmental pollutants in water
Key words: g-C3N4 nanosheet Cadmium ion Methylene blue Adsorption
Prof. KONG Ling-tao, Ph. D Principal Investigator
Institute of Intelligent Machines, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Hefei 230031, China
Tel: 86-0551-6559-5607
Email: ltkong@iim.ac.cn
