Cellulosic aerogel from water hyacinth (WH) was synthesized to address the dual environmental issues of water hyacinth pollution and the production of a green material. Raw WH was treated with sodium hydroxide (NaOH) with microwave assistance and in combination with hydrogen peroxide (H 2 O 2 ). The results from X-ray diffraction (XRD), Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR) spectroscopy, and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) showed that lignin and hemicellulose were markedly decreased after treatment, reducing from 24.02% hemicellulose and 5.67% lignin in raw WH to 8.32 and 1.92%, respectively. Cellulose aerogel from the pretreated WH had a high porosity of 98.8% with a density of 0.0162 g•cm −3 and a low thermal conductivity of 0.030 W•m −1 •K −1 . After modification with methyl trimethoxysilane (MTMS) to produce a highly hydrophobic material, WH aerogel exhibited high stability for oil absorption at a capacity of 43.3, 43.15, 40.40, and 41.88 (g•g −1 ) with diesel oil (DO), motor oil (MO), and their mixture with water (DO + W and MO + W), respectively. The adsorption remained stable after 10 cycles.
Hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) plays
an essential
role in many industrial fields and is globally listed as one of the
indispensable chemicals. However, synthesizing H2O2 using the anthraquinone oxidation (AO) process requires multiple
steps and releases hazardous organic compounds, which could seriously
lead to many environmental and human health-related problems. Therefore,
an urgent need for manufacturing H2O2 using
green and sustainable methods to deal with the mentioned issues has
enormously captured scientific interest. In this circumstance, the
integration of piezo and photo effects on the generation of H2O2 from water and oxygen with the requirements
of using low-cost and efficient catalytic materials is majorly considered.
Herein, we report a simple and efficient way to produce H2O2 by employing modified graphitic carbon nitride (g-C3N4) catalysts to achieve the targets. The nanostructured
materials were intensively characterized to deeply understand how
the catalysts work to produce a significant amount of H2O2, reaching up to 1147.03 μM within 1 h irradiation.
The findings showed that the fabrication of novel metal–carbon
bonds and other functional groups could be responsible for adding
more active sites in the system, promoting the enhancement of catalytic
activities. This work would offer scientists a novel outlook to design
and develop carbon-based materials for producing fine chemicals from
catalysis and other applications.
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