Customization, structural synthesis, and adsorption mechanism of lanthanide-dotted bio-based carbon

Overcoming the 'soft nature' of bio-based porous carbon materials (BPCM) has become a hot topic in the biochar field; hence the emphasis is on developing a new "powerful" structure for functional BPCM. This work utilizes f-orbital lanthanide elements to enhance the pore walls and fabricate successfully functionalized biochar (magnetically lanthanum-dot chitosan-biobased materials, MCS@La2O2CO3). The ultrastructure of the MCS@La2O2CO3 was characterized, and adsorption mechanisms were explored. The Site Energy Distribution Theory (SEDT) addressed to elucidate reactions and energy processes. The results indicate that MCS@ La2O2CO3 has a high surface area of 1587.88 m2·g−1 and magnetization value of 16.560 emu·g−1. Within 60 min, the functionalized MCS@La2O2CO3 exhibited exceptional adsorption capacity by absorbing over 200 mg·g−1 of various types of UV-filter pollutants, surpassing the majority of other BPCM. The Adsorption Coexistence Equation (MACE) was constructed to explain the monolayer-multilayer adsorption mechanism. The SEDT analysis further defines that the MCS@ La2O2CO3 structure is short-range disordered amorphous and exhibits high-energy selectivity, which is positively correlated with temperature. This work enables the omnidirectional enhancement of tailored biobased adsorbents for the depollution of UV-filter-contaminated water.