Honeycomb-like activated carbon with microporous nanosheets structure prepared from waste biomass cork for highly efficient dye wastewater treatment

Cork, a porous biomass material, is consist of thin-walled hollow prismatic cells arranged into a compact and orderly honeycomb-like structure and could be applied as an adsorption material. Here, cork-activated carbons (CACs) with a fluffy honeycomb-like structure were synthesized by two-step pyrolysis with solid KOH chemical activation to rapidly and efficiently adsorb methylene blue (MB) (maximum wavelength: 664 nm). The structure, morphology and surface functional groups of the CACs were characterized using BET, SEM, and FTIR analysis. The results show that the CACs have a well-developed hierarchical porous structure and an ultra-high specific surface area of 2864.9 m2/g, which would facilitate the efficient diffusion and adsorption of MB molecules onto CACs. MB adsorption performance results show that the CACs have an outstanding maximum MB adsorption capacity (1103.68 mg/g) and fast adsorption kinetics (800 mg/L, 99.8% in 10 min), indicating that CACs possess significant advantages compared with most other adsorbents previously reported. The adsorption mechanism was studied by various kinetic models, isothermal models and thermodynamic models. Langmuir model is the most adapted to describe the adsorption process, indicating that the MB molecules are uniformly adsorbed on CAC’s surface in a single layer. Moreover, MB adsorption by the CACs was an endothermic, spontaneous and randomly increasing adsorption. The regeneration test showed that the uptake of MB onto CACs can still reached 580 mg/g after three adsorption-desorption cycles, demonstrating the excellent reusability of CACs. The continuous adsorption performance of MB onto CACs was evaluated by a packed column test, which further confirmed its potential as an adsorbent for dye wastewater purification.