Aiming to overcome the limitations of the narrow pore size distributions of traditional activated carbon materials and to achieve wide adaptabilities towards large molecules adsorption, we herein demonstrate a new type of activated carbon with a broadened pore size distribution for high-rate and high-capacity aqueous dye molecule (Rhodamine B) adsorption. The preparation of CP-AC is achieved by a facile and one-step mineral-assisted chem-physical activation strategy from Chinese large-reserve Zhundong coal with ZnCl 2 and CO 2 as the activation agents. The method yields the activated carbon (CP-AC) that has a pore-size broadened hierarchical pore configuration with a high surface area and a large pore volume, favorably enabling a high-capacity Rhodamine B adsorption up to 881 mg g À1 , which is among the highest levels of the reported activated carbons. A sonication-assisted adsorption test further demonstrates the high-rate adsorption capability of CP-AC with Rhodamine B adsorption capacity up to 842 mg g À1 within 30 min (96% of the saturation capacity) while microporous activated carbon obtained by solely ZnCl 2 activation could just achieve a capacity of 374 mg g À1 within 30 min. In virtue of the lowcost resource materials and washing-free craft, this work offers a simple and green preparation strategy towards high-performance coal based activated carbons, holding great potentials for the industrial production and applications. Fig. 5 RhB adsorption kinetic results of typical samples. (a) Adsorption capacities as a function of time; (b) normalized adsorption capacity to BET surface areas for typical samples; (c) pseudo-first order kinetic fitting for CP-AC; (d) pseudo-second order kinetic fitting for CP-AC. This journal isFig. 7 RhB adsorption kinetic results of typical samples. (a) Intraparticle model fitting for saturation adsorption test; (b) intraparticle model fitting for sonication-assisted adsorption test.This journal is
Solar vapor generation
holds great potential for seawater desalination
and wastewater treatment. Although various efficient solar absorbers
have been developed to enhance the performance of solar vapor generators
in recent years, their efficiency is still limited by unnecessary
heat loss. In this article, a novel 3D hierarchical solar vapor generator
(3DHG) was constructed with hydrophilic carbon felt. Different from
interfacial solar vapor generators reported before, the porous and
hydrophilic channels of 3DHG were exposed to the air directly, which
probably resulted in a lower saturated vapor pressure of 3DHG. Therefore,
this structure was beneficial for vapor escaping and led to lower
average temperature of 3DHG than that of the surroundings at the same
time owing to negligible convection loss and radiation loss of 3DHG.
The highest evaporation rate (ER) of 1.56 kg m–2 h–1 and efficiency of 98.1% were obtained under
1 sun. In addition, 3DHG was also used for industry dyeing wastewater
treatment and exhibited a minimum ER of 1.45 kg m–2 h–1 even after 7 days. This study presents a novel
approach not only to design a solar vapor generator with high efficiency
but also widens its potential application in seawater desalination
and practical wastewater treatment.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.