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Superb removal capacity of hierarchically porous magnesium oxide for phosphate and methyl orange

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Abstract

Here, we successfully developed a template-free way to fabricate hierarchically porous magnesium oxide (MgO) and carefully investigated the adsorption behavior for phosphate and methyl orange (MO). The average pore size and the percentage porosity decreased with the increase in the feeding ratio of Mg2+/NH3. Among the three samples, MgO-25 shows the highest surface area of 63 m2 g−1 determined by the mercury intrusion method, and MgO-50 exhibits the highest BET surface area of 121 m2 g−1. For all the MgO samples, the adsorption process follows the pseudo second-order and Langmuir isotherm for phosphate, while pseudo second-order and the Freundlich isotherm for MO. Among the investigated samples, MgO-25 shows the most maximum removal capacity of 478.5 mg g−1 for phosphate and the highest removal capacity of 4483.9 mg g−1 for MO. This study compromises a low-cost and convenient dual function material for excellent water remediation of multiple industries.

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Funding

This work is supported by the National Key R&D Program of China (no. 2016YFB0301600), Natural Science Foundation of China (no. 21571015, 21627813), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (JD1716), and Program for Changjiang Scholars and Innovative Research Team in University (no. IRT1205). S. Ahmed specially thanks the financial support from Chinese Scholarship Council.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Chemical Resource Engineering, Beijing Engineering Center for Hierarchical Catalysts, Beijing University of Chemical Technology, No. 15 Beisanhuan East Road, Chaoyang District, Beijing, 100029, China

    Saeed Ahmed, Yiwei Guo, Dianqing Li, Pinggui Tang & Yongjun Feng

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  1. Saeed Ahmed
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  2. Yiwei Guo
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  3. Dianqing Li
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  4. Pinggui Tang
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  5. Yongjun Feng
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Correspondence to Yongjun Feng.

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Responsible editor: Tito Roberto Cadaval Jr

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Ahmed, S., Guo, Y., Li, D. et al. Superb removal capacity of hierarchically porous magnesium oxide for phosphate and methyl orange. Environ Sci Pollut Res 25, 24907–24916 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-018-2565-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-018-2565-2

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