Pejman Hadi

Aqueous mercury adsorption by activated carbons

Due to serious public health threats resulting from mercury pollution and its rapid distribution in our food chain through the contamination of water bodies, stringent regulations have been enacted on mercury-laden wastewater discharge. Activated carbons have been widely used in the removal of mercuric ions from aqueous effluents. The surface and textural characteristics of activated carbons are the two decisive factors in their efficiency in mercury removal from wastewater. Herein, the structural properties and binding affinity of mercuric ions from effluents have been presented. Also, specific attention has been directed to the effect of sulfur-containing functional moieties on enhancing the mercury adsorption. It has been demonstrated that surface area, pore size, pore size distribution and surface functional groups should collectively be taken into consideration in designing the optimal mercury removal process. Moreover, the mercury adsorption mechanism has been addressed using equilibrium adsorption isotherm, thermodynamic and kinetic studies. Further recommendations have been proposed with the aim of increasing the mercury removal efficiency using carbon activation processes with lower energy input, while achieving similar or even higher efficiencies.

Removal of cadmium ions from wastewater using innovative electronic waste-derived material

Cadmium is a highly toxic heavy metal even at a trace level. In this study, a novel material derived from waste PCBs has been applied as an adsorbent to remove cadmium ions from aqueous solutions. The effects of various factors including contact time, initial cadmium ion concentration, pH and adsorbent dosage have been evaluated. The maximum uptake capacity of the newly derived material for cadmium ions has reached 2.1mmol/g at an initial pH 4. This value shows that this material can effectively remove cadmium ions from effluent. The equilibrium isotherm has been analyzed using several isotherm equations and is best described by the Redlich-Peterson model. Furthermore, different commercial adsorbent resins have been studied for comparison purposes. The results further confirm that this activated material is highly competitive with its commercial counterparts.

Multilayer Dye Adsorption in Activated Carbons—Facile Approach to Exploit Vacant Sites and Interlayer Charge Interaction

Altering the textural properties of activated carbons (ACs) via physicochemical techniques to increase their specific surface area and/or to manipulate their pore size is a common practice to enhance their adsorption capacity. Instead, this study proposes the utilization of the vacant sites remaining unoccupied after dye uptake saturation by removing the steric hindrance and same-charge repulsion phenomena via multilayer adsorption. Herein, it has been shown that the adsorption capacity of the fresh AC is a direct function of the dye molecular size. As the cross-sectional area of the dye molecule increases, the steric hindrance effect exerted on the neighboring adsorbed molecules increases, and the geometrical packing efficiency is constrained. Thus, ACs saturated with larger dye molecules render higher concentrations of vacant adsorption sites which can accommodate an additional layer of dye molecules on the exhausted adsorbent through interlayer attractive forces. The second layer adsorption capacity (60-200 mg·g(-1)) has been demonstrated to have a linear relationship with the uncovered surface area of the exhausted AC, which is, in turn, inversely proportional to the adsorbate molecular size. Unlike the second layer adsorption, the third layer adsorption is a direct function of the charge density of the second layer.

Sustainable development of tyre char-based activated carbons with different textural properties for value-added applications.

This paper aims at the sustainable development of activated carbons for value-added applications from the waste tyre pyrolysis product, tyre char, in order to make pyrolysis economically favorable. Two activation process parameters, activation temperature (900, 925, 950 and 975 °C) and residence time (2, 4 and 6 h) with steam as the activating agent have been investigated. The textural properties of the produced tyre char activated carbons have been characterized by nitrogen adsorption-desorption experiments at -196 °C. The activation process has resulted in the production of mesoporous activated carbons confirmed by the existence of hysteresis loops in the N2 adsorption-desorption curves and the pore size distribution curves obtained from BJH method. The BET surface area, total pore volume and mesopore volume of the activated carbons from tyre char have been improved to 732 m(2)/g, 0.91 cm(3)/g and 0.89 cm(3)/g, respectively. It has been observed that the BET surface area, mesopore volume and total pore volume increased linearly with burnoff during activation in the range of experimental parameters studied. Thus, yield-normalized surface area, defined as the surface area of the activated carbon per gram of the precursor, has been introduced to optimize the activation conditions. Accordingly, the optimized activation conditions have been demonstrated as an activation temperature of 975 °C and an activation time of 4 h.

Sustainable development of a surface-functionalized mesoporous aluminosilicate with ultra-high ion exchange efficiency

The present work employs a facile hydroxylation technique to efficiently functionalize the surface of a waste-derived aluminosilicate for ultra-high heavy metal uptake via ion exchange. The functionalization process leads to the transformation of a nonporous hydrophobic waste material to a mesoporous hydrophilic material with a high concentration of ion exchange sites. The modification of the surface and textural characteristics of the mesoporous aluminosilicate has been thoroughly elucidated. The functionalization brings about the partial depolymerization of the aluminosilicate network and the transformation of unreactive bridging oxygens (BO) into non-bridging oxygens (NBO) as active sites as evidenced by 29Si NMR and FTIR. The positively-charged alkali metals bound to the NBO act as facile ion exchange sites. Ultra-high heavy metal uptake capacity of the functionalized material through a combination of ion exchange and physisorption mechanisms has revealed the great potential of this aluminosilicate material for treatment of heavy metal-laden wastewater in a sustainable manner for practical applications.

Aluminosilicate-based adsorbent in equimolar and non-equimolar binary-component heavy metal removal systems

Cadmium (Cd) and lead (Pb) are toxic heavy metals commonly used in various industries. The simultaneous presence of these metals in wastewater amplifies the toxicity of wastewater and the complexity of the treatment process. This study has investigated the selective behavior of an aluminosilicate-based mesoporous adsorbent. It has been demonstrated that when equimolar quantities of the metals are present in wastewater, the adsorbent uptakes the Pb²⁺ ions selectively. This has been attributed to the higher electronegativity value of Pb²⁺ compared to Cd²⁺ which can be more readily adsorbed on the adsorbent surface, displacing the Cd²⁺ ions. The selectivity can be advantageous when the objective is the separation and reuse of the metals besides wastewater treatment. In non-equimolar solutions, a complete selectivity can be observed up to a threshold Pb²⁺ molar ratio of 30%. Below this threshold value, the Cd²⁺ and Pb²⁺ ions are uptaken simultaneously due to the abundance of Cd²⁺ ions and the availability of adsorption sites at very low Pb²⁺ molar ratios. Moreover, the total adsorption capacities of the adsorbent for the multi-component system have been shown to be in the same range as the single-component system for each metal ion which can be of high value for industrial applications.

Equilibrium, Kinetic and Optimization Studies for the Adsorption of Tartrazine in Water onto Activated Carbon from Pecan Nut Shells

A series of experimental studies has been carried out using a novel, sustainable adsorbent to remove Tartrazine dye, namely, a steam activated carbon obtained from pecan nut shells. The dye also known as acid yellow 23 has been used in the food industry but is now classified as a carcinogen. The experimental equilibrium data has been used to test four equilibrium isotherm models and then the best fitting model was optimised to minimise the mass of adsorbent used to save costs in industrial applications using a two-stage batch adsorption system. The experimental contact time data has also been modelled and the best fit model has been used to optimise/minimise the contact time for a range of process conditions.