Synthesis of graphene oxide nano-materials coated bio-char using carbonaceous industrial waste for phenol separation from water

This article presents the process of synthesizing a value added product from a carbonaceous industrial waste. For this a carbonaceous industrial waste was coated with graphene oxide (GO) and then thermally activated at 800 degrees C. The GO and the GO-coated biochar were characterized with atomic force microscope, raman spectroscope, fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, field-emission scanning electron microscope, x-ray Diffraction and transmission electron microscope. This GO-coated biochar was then utilized to investigate removal capacity of phenol present in wastewater. The data indicated that the GO-coated biochar showed better phenol removal efficacy then that of the GO itself. The isotherm analysis indicated that the data could be described best with Langmuir isotherm indicating that the phenol separation was a monolayer surface adsorption. The kinetic analysis indicated that the phenol separation process was followed by pseudo second order kinetics. Also, it was evident from the intra-particle diffusion kinetic analysis that diffusion plays a significant role in phenol separation. From thermodynamic analysis it was evident that the phenol separation process was endothermic as well as spontaneous in nature. The GO-coated biochar showed better separation efficacy in the presence of salt.