The remediation of water streams, polluted by various substances, is important for realizing a sustainable future. Magnetic adsorbents are promising materials for wastewater treatment. Although numerous techniques have been developed for the preparation of magnetic adsorbents, with effective adsorption performance, reviews that focus on the synthesis methods of magnetic adsorbents for wastewater treatment and their material structures have not been reported. In this review, advancements in the synthesis methods of magnetic adsorbents for the removal of substances from water streams has been comprehensively summarized and discussed. Generally, the synthesis methods are categorized into five groups, as follows: direct use of magnetic particles as adsorbents, attachment of pre-prepared adsorbents and pre-prepared magnetic particles, synthesis of magnetic particles on pre-prepared adsorbents, synthesis of adsorbents on preprepared magnetic particles, and co-synthesis of adsorbents and magnetic particles. The main improvements in the advanced methods involved making the conventional synthesis a less energy intensive, more efficient, and simpler process, while maintaining or increasing the adsorption performance. The key challenges, such as the enhancement of the adsorption performance of materials and the design of sophisticated material structures, are discussed as well.

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In this study, we customized magnetic sorbents by functionalizing silica coated magnetite with octadecyl(C18)silane (Fe3O4@SiO2@C18). This sorbent was intended for the determination of trace orthophosphate (o-PO43−) in unpolluted freshwater samples. The o-PO43− was transformed to phosphomolybdenum blue (PMB), a known polyoxometalate ion. Then the PMB were coupled with cetyl trimethyl ammonium bromide (CTAB), cationic surfactant, in order to hydrophobically bound with the Fe3O4@SiO2@C18 particles through dispersive magnetic solid-phase extraction (d-MSPE) as part of sample preconcentration. The PMB–CTAB–magnetic particles are simply separated from the aqueous solution by the external magnet. The acidified ethanol 0.5 mL was used as PMB-CTAB eluent to produce an intense blue solution, which the absorbance was measured using a UV–Vis spectrophotometer at 800 nm. The proposed method (employing 2 mg of Fe3O4@SiO2@C18) yielded an enhancement factor of 32 with a linear range of 1.0–30.0 µg P L−1. Precision at 6.0 µg P L−1 and 25.0 µg P L−1 were 3.70 and 2.49% (RSD, n = 6) respectively. The lower detection limit of 0.3 µg P L−1 and quantification limit of 1.0 µg P L−1 allowed trace levels analysis of o-PO43− in samples. The reliability and accuracy of the proposed method were confirmed by using a certified reference material. Our method offers highly sensitive detection of o-PO43− with simple procedures that can be operated at room temperature and short analysis time.

This work utilized the simplicity of a so-called membraneless vaporization (MBL-VP) unit as a gas separator for the colorimetric determination of ethanol in alcoholic beverages. A beverage sample with a volume of 1 mL was directly injected into a small container which was hung from a lid inside a closed 40 mL reused glass bottle without pretreatment such as distillation. An acidified potassium dichromate (Cr2O72−) acceptor solution, preadded to the glass bottle, was reduced to Chromium (III) ion by the diffusion of vaporized ethanol from the sample. After 5 min, the absorbing solution was collected for colorimetric detection at 590 nm. The unit manually quantifies ethanol in the range 1.0–90% (v/v) with satisfactory interday precision but without matrix effect (recovery 89−109%). The method was validated with the conventional distillation/pycnometer method which showed no significant difference of ethanol contents between those two methods and the declared values of 12 alcoholic beverages, indicating sufficient accuracy. Analyses of alcoholic beverages using this method were successful with benefits of simplicity, cheapness, and less energy consumption.

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The removal of Zn from wastewater generated from the Zn-based electroplating manufacturing process is essential because the regulation limit of Zn concentration in wastewater is becoming stricter in Japan. However, achieving this through conventional methods is difficult, especially for small and medium enterprises in the plating industry. Therefore, a suitable Zn-removal method with a low cost but high performance and Zn selectivity is required. The application of adsorbents is one possible solution. Mesoporous silica (MS) is a well-known adsorbent with controllable pore size, high specific surface area (SSA), high acid resistance, and ease of surface modification. In this study, we modified the surfaces of MSs with different initial pore sizes by amino groups and investigated their Zn removal performances. The effect of pore size on amine modification using (3-aminopropyl)triethoxysilane and on adsorption performance in a single system was investigated along with Zn adsorption selectivity in the Zn–Ni binary system. Amine-modified MS prepared from MS with an initial pore size of 1.9 nm showed drastically lower performance compared to those prepared from MS with an initial pore size larger than 2.8 nm. Zn-selectivity in the Zn–Ni binary system, containing equal amounts of Zn and Ni, was found to reach a maximum of 21.6 when modifying MS with an initial pore size of 2.8 nm.

Metal/carbon composite plating is an effective strategy for improving and adding properties to metal plating by incorporating carbon materials into the metal matrices. Copper (Cu) is widely applied, particularly in the areas of heat management and electronic packaging owing to its high thermal and electrical conductivities, which can be further improved together with improvements in mechanical properties by compositing it with carbon nanotubes (CNTs). However, because hydrophobic CNTs are hardly dispersible in aqueous solutions, additional intense acid treatment or the addition of dispersants is required for their dispersion. Moreover, previous studies have reported that these methods suffer from deterioration of composite material performance through the destruction of the CNT surface or the inclusion of dispersants into the plating. Therefore, in this study, the electrodeposition of a Cu/CNT composite in a non-aqueous solvent that can disperse CNTs without any additional treatment is investigated. The experimental results show that it is possible to deposit Cu from a N-methyl-2-pyrrolidone containing copper iodide and potassium iodide. Furthermore, Cu/CNT composite platings containing CNTs up to 0.12 mass% were prepared by constant current electrolysis, and applying pulse electrolysis can increase the CNTs content up to 0.22 mass%.