Effect of Pretreatment on the Adsorption Performance of Ni/ZnO Adsorbent for Dibenzothiophene Desulfurization

Magnetic adsorbent developed with alkali-thermal pretreated biogas slurry solids for the removal of heavy metals: optimization, kinetic, and equilibrium study

Discharge of effluents containing heavy metal without adequate treatment causes contamination of water resources and creates environmental and health issues. Adsorption could be applied to remediate heavy metals from wastewater effectively. In this study, a low-cost adsorbent was prepared by magnetic modification of pretreated biogas slurry solids (BSS) to remove heavy metals such as Cu²⁺, Cd²⁺, and Pb²⁺. The temperature (423 K) and time (1.5 h) of pretreatment, the BSS to KOH ratio (1:10 w/v), and the ratio of magnetic iron nanoparticle (MIN) to pretreated BSS (PSS) (1:2 w/w) were optimized for the preparation of adsorbent. The magnetically modified pretreated biogas slurry solid (MMPSS) adsorbent was characterized by BET isotherm, FTIR, XRD, FESEM, VSM, and EDX analysis. MMPSS attained equilibrium at 60 min and showed an adsorption capacity of 26.84 mg/g, 24.79 mg/g, and 23.86 mg/g with removal percentages 89.46%, 82.63%, and 79.54% for Cu²⁺, Cd²⁺, and Pb²⁺, respectively, at 310 K and pH 6 with an initial concentration of 150 mg/L. The adsorption process followed a pseudo second-order model with an R² value above 0.9 for all metals with a well-approaching equilibrium pattern. The good fit of experimental data by the Langmuir isotherm model implied monolayer adsorption. The metal ions adsorbed onto MMPSS were able to desorb effectively in the presence of HCl and retained 83.01%, 84.66%, and 81.83% of the initial adsorption capacity for Cu²⁺, Cd²⁺, and Pb²⁺ respectively after 5 consecutive cycles.

The Physiochemical Properties and Adsorption Characteristics of Processed Pomelo Peel as a Carrier for Epigallocatechin-3-Gallate

The NaOH-HCl- and ethanol-pretreated pomelo peel samples were prepared to apply to the batch adsorption for epigallocatechin-3-gallate (EGCG). The characteristics of peel samples were determined by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, scanning electron microscopy and a laser particle analyzer. The results of the physiochemical properties of the peel samples demonstrate that these peel samples have a promising adsorption capacity for EGCG, because of the increased potential binding sites on the surface compared with those of untreated peel samples. These two peel samples showed enhanced adsorption capacities of EGCG compared with that of unmodified peel in terms of the isothermal adsorption process, which could be described by both Langmuir and Freundlich models, with the theoretical maximum adsorption capacity of 77.52 and 94.34 mg g−1 for the NaOH-HCl and ethanol-treated peel samples, respectively. The adsorption kinetics demonstrated an excellent fitness to pseudo-second-order, showing that chemisorption was the rate-limiting step. The thermodynamics analysis revealed that the adsorption reaction was a spontaneous and endothermic process. This work highlights that the processed pomelo peels have outstanding adsorption capacities for EGCG, which could be promising candidates for EGCG delivering in functional food application.

Magnetic-heteropolyacid mesoporous catalysts for deep oxidative desulfurization of fuel: The influence on the amount of APES used

Magnetic-heteropolyacid mesoporous catalysts have been obtained, in which magnetic Fe₃O₄ in the center of MCM-41 mesoporous materials and APES (3-aminopropyl-triethoxysilane) used to link heteropolyacid. To noted, for the various molar ratio APES used in the synthesized process, different numbers of -OCH₃ were exposed in the final products (zero, one and two), named Fe@MP-1, Fe@MP-2 and Fe@MP-3, respectively. Interestingly, the three kinds of catalysts exhibited the various DBT removal efficiency during the oxidative desulfurization process, mainly due to their structure variance leading to be the research focus in this work. Among them, under the oxygen in air as oxidant, Fe@MP-1, with no -OCH₃ exposed outside, showed the excellent desulfurization activity with 100% DBT conversion in 90 min and behaved nearly no obvious decrease after at least 8 recycling times. Thus, the certain amount of APES, used to link active components with supporters, is suggested as an effective aspect to increase the oxidative desulfurization efficiency and maybe the different types of linkage also show the various influence, which will be focused on in our further researches.