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High performance of 3D porous graphene/lignin/sodium alginate composite for adsorption of Cd(II) and Pb(II)

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Abstract

A novel adsorbent, three-dimensional porous graphene/lignin/sodium alginate nanocomposite (denoted as 3D PG/L/SA) was fabricated by hydrothermal polymerization of lignin and sodium alginate in the presence of graphene oxide (GO) in an aqueous system. Fourier transform infrared spectra, thermo-gravimetric analysis, scanning electron microscopy, and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy were employed to characterize the morphology and structure of this novel functional PG/L/SA nanocomposite. A series of adsorption experiments for cleanup of Cd(II) and Pb(II) were conducted to investigate the effects of lignin and sodium alginate on the graphene structure. It was found that PG/L/SA showed a significant increase in adsorption capacity contrast to porous graphene (PG). The as-prepared material achieved the adsorption capacity for Cd(II) and Pb(II) of 79.88 and 226.24 mg/g, respectively. Meanwhile, the adsorption process matched well with the Langmuir isotherm model and the pseudo-second-order kinetic model. Studies were also conducted to demonstrate the applicability of the sorbent to the removal of heavy metal ions from metal smelting wastewater.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 21571191 and No. 51674292) and Provincial Natural Science Foundation of Hunan (2016JJ1023).

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Correspondence to Xinyu Jiang.

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Responsible editor: Guilherme L. Dotto

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Zhou, F., Feng, X., Yu, J. et al. High performance of 3D porous graphene/lignin/sodium alginate composite for adsorption of Cd(II) and Pb(II). Environ Sci Pollut Res 25, 15651–15661 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-018-1733-8

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