Facile and scalable synthesis of mesoporous composite materials from coal gasification fine slag for enhanced adsorption of malachite green

The recycling of the solid wastes produced in the industrial process and converting them into functional materials with unique structures are of great significance for the sustainable development of human society. In this study, a facile and scalable synthesis method was designed for the preparation of mesoporous composite materials from waste coal gasification fine slag using K2CO3 as a mild chemical additive to chemically recombine SiO2 and Al2O3. At a fine slag to K2CO3 mass ratio of 1:1, a mesoporous composite material (OMB-KB) mainly composed of faujasite-Na and amicite was obtained, which possessed a uniformly porous and loose structure with a specific surface area of 40.26 m2/g and the pore size range of 2–50 nm. Metals inherited from the raw slag and various chemical groups existed on the surface of OMB-KB, making the materials have unique surface chemical properties. OMB-KB exhibited ultra-high adsorption performance on malachite green (MG), and the adsorption capacity reached 7218.31 mg/g when 0.01 g of OMB-KB and 300 ml of MG solution with a concentration of 300 mg/L were used for the adsorption at 298K. The increase of pH was beneficial to the adsorption of cationic MG, and the removal efficiency reached an excellent state at pH ≥ 6. The good fitting of the pseudo-second-order kinetic model and the Freundlich isotherm model suggested that the adsorption process was dominated by chemisorption. The thermodynamic analysis showed that the adsorption of OMB-KB to MG was endothermic, entropy-increasing and entropy-controlled. The adsorption of MG by the material was realized through the exchange interactions between cations, as well as the electrostatic attraction and van der Waals forces between –OH groups and MG. Meanwhile, the oxygen-containing groups and π-electrons in the carbon layer could also adsorb MG molecules by electrostatic attraction.