Nitrogen rich hollow carbon spheres with well-developed mesoporous: An efficient adsorbent for tetracycline removal

In this study, we developed a simple and green method to fabricate the N-doped mesoporous hollow carbon (NMHC) materials by one step carbonization of coating the melamine‐formaldehyde (MF) resin sphere with dopamine (DA). The characterization results indicated that the NMHC had large specific surface areas (302.38–399.54 m 2 /g), well-developed mesoporous structure (0.390–0.414 cm 3 /g) and high nitrogen content (7.71–10.15 wt%). The as-prepared NMHC exhibited excellent adsorption performance towards tetracycline (TC), and the maximum adsorption amount on the NMHC-700 was 481.70 mg/g at 298 K, which increases of 19.46% and 9.36% than that of NMHC-600 (403.22 mg/g) and NMHC-800 (440.44 mg/g), respectively. The adsorption process obeyed the pseudo-second-order kinetic model and Langmuir adsorption isotherm model. The NMHC exhibited outstanding reusability for TC after five cycles. And the NMHC adsorbents would be considered as a broad-spectrum adsorbent to remove other organic pollutants. Moreover, it was also found that the NMHC still maintained excellent adsorption capability towards TC in actual wastewater. Thus, this work not only displayed a mild method to prepare the NMHC for the removal of antibiotics, but also demonstrated the practical application prospect of the NMHC. • The NMHC with abundant mesoporous structure exhibited efficient adsorption for TC. • High specific surface areas and N content together promoted the adsorption performance of NMHC. • The NMHC was a broad-spectrum adsorbent to remove various pollutants. • The NMHC showed expansive application prospect in actual wastewater.