Characterization and adsorption mechanism of ZrO2 mesoporous fibers for health-hazardous fluoride removal

One-dimension ZrO2 mesoporous fibers were successfully synthesized by utilizing the electrospinning device combining with the soft-template method. The morphology and composite of the fibers were characterized by XRD, SEM, TEM, FT-IR, TGA/DSC and XPS, and the pore structure and surface area were calculated according the BET measured results. The fluoride adsorption performance of the fibers was investigated and the adsorption capacity was upto 297.70 mg g−1. Moreover, the equilibrium concentration could be reached to 1.41 mg L−1 with the initial of 30 mg L−1, and the removal rate could be reached to 95.3%. The adsorption data were well fitted with the Freundlich isotherm model and pseudo-second-order kinetic model. The fibers had a good reusability and long-term utilization for fluoride adsorption. All the results suggested that the as-prepared ZrO2 mesoporous fibers with high surface area could be an excellent adsorbent for the wastewater defluoridation treatment.