Honeycomb-like cork activated carbon with ultra-high adsorption capacity for anionic, cationic and mixed dye: Preparation, performance and mechanism

Herein, the cork activated carbon (CAC) with excellent adsorption performance for cationic dye, anionic dye, and mixed dye was obtained by a two-step pyrolysis method. The CAC exhibits a fluffy honeycomb structure consisted of porous carbon nanosheets (100-200 nm), ultra-high specific surface area (3402.68 m2/g), and well-developed hierarchical porous structure, which offers a great deal of adsorption sites and transport channels to dye molecules. The adsorption process of all the dyes onto CAC is better described by Langmuir isotherm model and pseudo-2nd-order kinetic model. The CAC shows ultra-high adsorption capacity for methylene blue (1283.99 mg/g), rhodamine B (4067.57 mg/g), methyl orange (2666.2 mg/g), and congo red (8920.61 mg/g), with an extremely low equilibrium adsorption time (∼10 min). Collectively, this study demonstrated the potential of converting waste cork into high value-added adsorbent for the efficient purification of dye wastewater.