Department of Environment and Agricultural Natural Resources, College of Agricultural and Food Sciences, King Faisal University, Al-Ahsa, Saudi Arabia.
Department of Chemical Engineering, Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS, Tronoh, Malaysia.
PLoS One. 2020 Dec 4;15(12):e0243540. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0243540. eCollection 2020.
Rice husk is a base adsorbent for pollutant removal. It is a cost-effective material and a renewable resource. This study provides the physicochemical characterization of chemically and thermally treated rice husk adsorbents for phenol removal from aqueous solutions. We revealed new functional groups on rice husk adsorbents by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, and observed major changes in the pore structure (from macro-mesopores to micro-mesopores) of the developed rice husk adsorbents using scanning electron microscopy. Additionally, we studied their surface area and pore size distribution, and found a greater enhancement of the morphological structure of the thermally treated rice husk compared with that chemically treated. Thermally treated adsorbents presented a higher surface area (24-201 m2.g-1) than those chemically treated (3.2 m2.g-1). The thermal and chemical modifications of rice husk resulted in phenol removal efficiencies of 36%-64% and 28%, respectively. Thus, we recommend using thermally treated rice husk as a promising adsorbent for phenol removal from aqueous solutions.
稻壳是一种用于去除污染物的基础吸附剂。它是一种具有成本效益的材料，也是一种可再生资源。本研究对经过化学和热处理的稻壳吸附剂进行了物理化学特性表征，以去除水溶液中的苯酚。我们通过傅里叶变换红外光谱揭示了稻壳吸附剂上的新官能团，并通过扫描电子显微镜观察到开发的稻壳吸附剂的孔结构（从大孔-介孔到微孔-介孔）发生了主要变化。此外，我们研究了它们的表面积和孔径分布，并发现与化学处理相比，热处理后的稻壳的形态结构得到了更大的增强。热处理后的吸附剂的比表面积（24-201 m2.g-1）高于化学处理的（3.2 m2.g-1）。稻壳的热和化学改性导致苯酚去除效率分别为 36%-64%和 28%。因此，我们建议使用热处理后的稻壳作为一种很有前途的吸附剂，用于去除水溶液中的苯酚。
