State University of Maringa, Department of Chemical Engineering, Maringa 87020-900, Parana, Brazil.
State University of Maringa, Department of Chemical Engineering, Maringa 87020-900, Parana, Brazil.
Int J Biol Macromol. 2020 Dec 1;164:2535-2549. doi: 10.1016/j.ijbiomac.2020.08.118. Epub 2020 Aug 15.
Activated carbon (AC) is widely used in water treatment, however, it has some technical disadvantages, such as its high cost and difficulty to recover. To overcome these drawbacks, AC particles have been encapsulated within a polymeric support, mainly chitosan and alginate-based. The use of these biological macromolecules results in composites with lower-cost, superior mechanical properties, and higher number of functional groups, advantages that have been attracted the attention of the scientific community. However, the number of publications is relatively low, demonstrating an important research gap yet to be investigated. Thus, this paper aims to review the recent studies concerning the use of chitosan, alginate and other macromolecules as AC immobilizing agents, describing the synthesis methods, characterization analyses and adsorption studies, focusing on the main advantages, disadvantages, gaps and future perspectives. Throughout the review it was verified that the composites were able to remove several water contaminants, mainly dyes and heavy metals, with high efficiency. Synergistic effects were detected, indicating the role of both polymers and AC, which increased the spectrum of contaminants capable of being adsorbed. Finally, it was observed a gap in column experiments, suggesting that future studies are essential to elucidate the applications in the industrial perspective.
活性炭（AC）在水处理中得到了广泛应用，但其成本高、回收困难等技术缺点。为了克服这些缺点，AC 颗粒已被封装在聚合物载体中，主要是壳聚糖和海藻酸盐基。这些生物大分子的使用导致复合材料具有低成本、更高的机械性能和更多的功能基团，这些优势引起了科学界的关注。然而，相关的出版物数量相对较少，这表明仍有一个重要的研究空白需要研究。因此，本文旨在综述近年来关于壳聚糖、海藻酸盐和其他大分子作为 AC 固定化剂的研究，描述其合成方法、表征分析和吸附研究，重点讨论主要优点、缺点、空白和未来展望。通过综述，我们发现这些复合材料能够有效地去除多种水污染物，主要是染料和重金属。还检测到协同效应，表明了聚合物和 AC 的作用，这增加了可以被吸附的污染物的范围。最后，观察到柱实验中的空白，这表明未来的研究对于阐明工业应用是必要的。
