Activated carbon prepared from catechol distillation residue for efficient adsorption of aromatic organic compounds from aqueous solution.

At present, activated carbon (AC) derived from industrial wastes has a great practical significance. In this work, residue activated carbon (RAC) was successfully synthesized from catechol distillation residue by a simple activation process based on two steps. The optimized RAC (RAC-800, activated at 800 °C) had high specific surface area (1800 m2/g) and large total pore volume (0.91 cm3/g). RAC-800 portrayed the evident increase of the graphitic structure and possessed abundant functional groups. Catechol (CC), phthalic acid (PA) and dimethyl phthalate (DMP) were chosen as typical pollutant to investigate the effect of different functional groups on adsorption aromatic compounds, and the equilibrium adsorption capacity of RAC-800 for CC, PA and DMP was 221.5, 365.0 and 449.9 mg/g, respectively. The adsorption behaviors were systematically studied by the combination of kinetic and thermodynamic model. The adsorption process was dominated by the π-π interaction, assisted by hydrogen bonding, hydrophobic and electrostatic interactions. In addition, regeneration study showed that the adsorption capacity can still remain over 88.5% after five cycles. In total, fine chemical distillation residues are promising to turn into the precursor of activated carbon, which has potential to be used as a good adsorbent for removal of aromatic compounds.

Well-Defined Cu2 O/Cu3 (BTC)2 Sponge Architecture as Efficient Phenolics Scavenger: Synchronous Etching and Reduction of MOFs in confined-pH NH3 ⋠H2 O.

Fabrication of low-dimensional nano-MOFs as well as nanoparticles/metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) hybrids has sparked new scientific interests but remains a challenging task. Taking Cu3 (BTC)2 as a proof of concept, it is demonstrated thats NH3 ⋅H2 O solution of a confined pH value can readily shape the bulk Cu3 (BTC)2 into nanoscale Cu3 (BTC)2 , beyond the need to control the crystal growth kinetics of MOFs. Adjusting the pH of NH3 ⋅H2 O within a much small range (10-11) allows fine tuning over the size and shape of nanoscale Cu3 (BTC)2 . Particularly at pH = 11, NH3 ⋅H2 O exhibits weak reducibility that triggers a reduction of part of Cu3 (BTC)2 into Cu2 O, while shaping the other into Cu3 (BTC)2 nanowires. Benefiting from the coincidence of reduction and etching effects, the newly generated Cu2 O dots can in situ anchor onto adjacent Cu3 (BTC)2 nanowires at highly dispersive state, forming a well-defined sponge-like architecture built of Cu2 O dots and nano-Cu3 (BTC)2 . The CuOx derived from annealing of the Cu2 O dots/nano-Cu3 (BTC)2 hybrid preserves the sophisticated sponge architecture and high porosity, and exhibits promising applications in phenol scavenging, with efficiency outperforming its counterparts and many other Cu-based catalysts reported in literature. It is anticipated that the findings here pave the way for the rational design of intricate nano-MOFs in a more efficient way.