New porous amine-functionalized biochar-based desiccated coconut waste as efficient CO adsorbents.

Climate change caused by the greenhouse gases CO remains a topic of global concern. To mitigate the excessive levels of anthrophonic CO in the atmosphere, CO capture methods have been developed and among these, adsorption is an especially promising method. This paper presents a series of amine functionalized biochar obtained from desiccated coconut waste (amine-biochar@DCW) for use as CO adsorbent. They are ethylenediamine-functionalized biochar@DCW (EDA-biochar@DCW), diethylenetriamine-functionalized biochar@DCW (DETA-biochar@DCW), triethylenetetramine-functionalized biochar@DCW (TETA-biochar@DCW), tetraethylenepentamine-functionalized biochar@DCW (TEPA-biochar@DCW), and pentaethylenehexamine-functionalized biochar@DCW (PEHA-biochar@DCW). The adsorbents were obtained through amine functionalization of biochar and they are characterized using Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), energy dispersive X-ray (EDX) spectroscopy, Brunauer-Emmett-Teller (BET), and thermogravimetric analysis (TGA). The CO adsorption study was conducted isothermally and using a thermogravimetric analyzer. From the results of the characterization analyses, a series of amine-biochar@DCW adsorbents had larger specific surface area in the range of 16.2 m/g-37.1 m/g as compare to surface area of pristine DCW (1.34 m/g). Furthermore, the results showed an increase in C and N contents as well as the appearance of NH stretching, NH bending, CN stretching, and CN bending, suggesting the presence of amine on the surface of biochar@DCW. The CO adsorption experiment shows that among the amine modified biochar adsorbents, TETA-biochar@DCW has the highest CO adsorption capacity (61.78 mg/g) when using a mass ratio (m:m) of biochar@DCW:TETA (1:2). The adsorption kinetics on the TETA-biochar@DCW was best fitted by the pseudo-second model (R = 0.9998), suggesting the adsorption process occurs through chemisorption. Additionally, TETA-biochar@DCW was found to have high selectivity toward CO gas and good reusability even after five CO adsorption-desorption cycles. The results demonstrate the potential of novel CO adsorbents based on amine functionalized on desiccated coconut waste biochar.