Magnetic mesoporous carbon for efficient removal of organic pollutants

Carbon materials such as activated carbons have been used in the field of water and wastewater treatments. However, the lack of mesopore and, particularly, the difficulty in recovering the spent carbon limited their applications. In this work, magnetic mesoporous carbon microspheres were synthesized by impregnating iron oxide precursors in the mesoporous carbon followed by the in situ conversion of the precursors into magnetite nanoparticles. The as-synthesized carbon microspheres with a high surface area of 742 m(2)/g and large mesopores of similar to 4.4 nm exhibited an excellent adsorption capacity for aqueous organic pollutants. The superparamagnetic microspheres with a saturation magnetization of 7.15 emu/g can be easily separated from the treated solution by external magnetic field.