Porous carbon from tobacco stalk for removal of organic dyes from water.

Tobacco stalk, a kind of agricultural residue, will cause environmental pollution because it contains some harmful substances such as nicotine. To realize the high-value utilization of this agricultural residue, we prepared porous carbon (TS-C) by high temperature carbonization using tobacco stalk as a precursor. It was found that TS-C displays a hierarchical pore structure and high Brunauer-Emmett-Teller (BET) surface area of 1416 m2 g-1. Moreover, TS-C has excellent performance in organic dye adsorption at room temperature, especially for Gentian violet (GV), with the maximum adsorption capacity of 926 mg g-1.