Micro/nanostructured porous Fe-Ni binary oxide and its enhanced arsenic adsorption performances.

A simple method is presented to synthesize micro/nano-structured Fe-Ni binary oxides based on co-precipitation and subsequent calcination. It has been found that the Fe-Ni binary oxides are composed of the porous microsized aggregates built with nanoparticles. When the atomic ratio of Fe to Ni is 2 to 1 the binary oxide is the micro-scaled aggregates consisting of the ultrafine NiFe2O4 nanoparticles with 3-6nm in size, and shows porous structure with pore diameter of 3nm and a specific surface area of 245m(2)g(-1). Such material is of abundant surface functional groups and has exhibited high adsorption performance to As(III) and As(V). The kinetic adsorption can be described by pseudo-second order model and the isothermal adsorption is subject to Langmuir model. The maximum adsorption capacity on such Fe-Ni porous binary oxide is up to 168.6mgg(-1) and 90.1mgg(-1) for As(III) and As(V), respectively, which are much higher than the arsenic adsorption capacity for most commercial adsorbents. Such enhanced adsorption ability for this material is mainly attributed to its porous structure and high specific surface area as well as the abundant surface functional groups. Further experiments have revealed that the influence of the anions such as sulfate, carbonate, and phosphate, which commonly co-exist in water, on the arsenic adsorption is insignificant, exhibiting strong adsorption selectivity to arsenic. This micro/nano-structured porous Fe-Ni binary oxide is hence of good practicability to be used as a highly efficient adsorbent for arsenic removal from the real arsenic-contaminated waters.