Adsorptive removal of resorcinol onto surface modified ordered mesoporous carbon: Kinetics and equilibrium study

Abstract

Ordered mesoporous carbon (OMC), a new member of carbonaceous family, has been able to attract substantial attention due to its unique attributes which are high Brunauer–Emmett–Teller (BET) surface area, narrow pore size distribution, large pore volume and thermal stability. A novel ordered mesoporous carbon was synthesized using COK‐19 silica template for the first time and doped with cerium (III) chloride for the removal of resorcinol from aqueous solution. Traditional multistage technique was employed for the synthesis of OMC. Nitrogen Adsorption–desorption isotherms, scanning electron microscope (SEM), transmission electron microscope (TEM), Fourier transformed infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), energy dispersive x‐ray spectroscopy (EDS) were employed to characterize the modified OMCs. Adsorption behavior of resorcinol was studied using batch adsorption method. Results from adsorption kinetics and isotherms suggest that pseudo‐second‐order model and Langmuir isotherm well described the experimental data. The adsorption capacities of ordered mesoporous adsorbents decrease in the following order: OMC‐5Ce (61 mg g−1) > OMC‐3Ce (54 mg g−1) > OMC‐1Ce (46 mg g−1) > OMC‐0.5Ce (39.4 mg g−1) > OMC (34.5 mg g−1). Adsorption capacity increased by 76.8% with increasing the cerium content from 0% to 5%. © 2018 American Institute of Chemical Engineers Environ Prog, 38: S386–S397, 2019