Adsorptivity and mechanism investigation for auramine on sugarcane leaf-based activated carbon prepared with Ni(NO₃)₂/NH₄H₂PO₄ as an activator

Water pollution causes serious harm to aquatic plants and human health, which is an urgent problem in the world. In this paper, sugarcane leaf-based activated carbon (PSLAC and NiPSLAC) was prepared with sugarcane leaves as raw material and NH4H2PO4 and Ni(NO3)(2)/NH4H2PO4 as activators, respectively, which was applied to the adsorption of auramine in dyeing wastewater. At the same time, the water consumption of the sample preparation process was studied. X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscope (SEM), thermogravimetric analysis (TG-DTG), fourier transform infrared spectrometer (FTIR), and Brunauer-Emmett-Teller (BET) were used to investigate the physicochemical properties of the samples. The water consumption of the NiPSLAC sample during the preparation process was 213.15 mL/g, which was 4.93%, 91.05%, 89.09%, 85.58%, and 54.18% of the NH4H2PO4, NaOH, KOH, K2CO3, and H3PO4 activated samples, respectively. The specific surface area and pore volume of the NiPSLAC sample were 1386.20 m(2)/g and 1.53 cm(3)/g, which were 410.57 m(2)/g and 0.46 cm(3)/g higher than the PSLAC sample, respectively. Compared with the PSLAC sample, the NiPSLAC sample had a higher graphitization degree and richer surface functional groups. Therefore, the NiPSLAC sample showed a higher adsorption capacity for auramine, reaching 164 mg/g, which was 1.12 times that of PSLAC, and the pseudo-second-order kinetic model and the Langmuir isotherm model could describe the adsorption process. This study provides a novel and advanced idea for developing a high-quality adsorbent for the removal of dyeing wastewater.