Combined dual-metal templates for fabrication of magnetic hierarchical porous carbon for highly efficient removal of 4-nitrophenol

• Published in: Journal of porous materials Vol. 23; no. 1; pp. 157 - 164
• Main Authors: Gao, Xiang-Yu, Liu, Rui-Lin, Ma, Jin, Zhan, Han-Ying, Zhang, Zhi-Qi
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York Springer US 01.02.2016; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Adsorption; Agar; Carbon; Catalysis; Characterization and Evaluation of Materials; Chelates; Chelation; Chemistry; Chemistry and Materials Science; Diffraction; Iron chlorides; Magnetic fields; Magnetic properties; Nitrogen; Nitrophenol; Physical Chemistry; Porous materials; Surface chemistry; X ray powder diffraction; Zinc; Magnetic materials; Adsorption; Carbon materials; Porous materials
• ISSN: 1380-2224; 1573-4854
• DOI: 10.1007/s10934-015-0066-y

A combined dual-metal template method was used to prepare magnetic hierarchical porous carbon (MHPC). In this work, agar was selected as the carbon source and chelating agent, and Zn(NO 3 ) 2 ·6H 2 O and FeCl 3 simultaneously served as the sources of the dual-metal center ions and as structure-directing agents. Zn 2+ and Fe 3+ ions were coordinated with agar via a chelate-assisted co-assembly route. The mixture was subsequently converted into an iron–zinc–carbon composite. Finally, the as-prepared composite was calcined to form MHPC. X-ray powder diffraction demonstrated the existence of α-Fe in the MHPC, and the magnetic properties of MHPC were determined to be 84.1 emu/g. Nitrogen adsorption measurements revealed that MHPC had a high surface area of 764.54 m 2 /g, and a total pore volume of 0.61 cm 3 /g. The adsorption test results indicated that MHPC has a high adsorption capacity for 4-nitrophenol (227.27 mg/g) and that it is easy to isolate from aqueous solution under the assistance of an external magnetic field.