Biomass-derived N/S dual-doped hierarchically porous carbon material as effective adsorbent for the removal of bisphenol F and bisphenol S

Biomass-derived heteroatom-doped porous carbon-based materials are emerging as low-cost adsorbents for removing common pollutants, although the adsorption performance is still unsatisfactory and the main adsorption mechanisms are still controversial. Herein, we report a facile and general method for fabricating biomass-derived N/S dual-doped hierarchically porous carbon adsorbent (MZ-NSPC). The MZ-NSPC material exhibits excellent adsorption capacity (295.8 mg/g for bisphenol F (BPF), 308.7 mg/g for bisphenol S (BPS)), short equilibrium time (30 min), and good reusability (the decline efficiency < 6.15% after five times). The remarkable adsorption performance originates from a large BET surface area, hierarchically porous structure, and N/S heteroatoms dual-doping. Combined with comparative experiments and density functional theory (DFT) calculations, we revealed that the doped N, S heteroatoms played a synergistic effect which promoted the adsorption performance and adsorption sites are mainly the oxidized-S and pyridinic-N. Importantly, for BPF, the proportion contribution of different mechanisms followed the order of hydrophobic interaction > π-π interaction > hydrogen bonding interaction. However, adsorption mechanism of BPS was mainly controlled by π-π interaction. This work not only promotes the development of low-cost and sustainable heteroatom-doped carbon-based materials, but also systematically studies adsorption mechanism of heteroatom-doped carbon-based materials for bisphenols.