Functional graphene oxide for organic pollutants removal from wastewater: a mini review

ABSTRACT

Graphene oxide (GO), an important derivative of graphene, with a variety of active oxygen-containing groups (hydroxyl, carboxyl and epoxy) on its surface is easy to be functionalized to obtain adsorbent with high adsorption capacity. To date, the adsorption behaviour of organic pollutants by functionalized GO adsorbents have been extensively studied, but there has been no systematic review regarding the functionalization method of GO for the purpose to remove organic pollutants from wastewater. The leading objective of this review is to (i) summarize the functionalization strategies of GO for organic pollutants removal (covalent functionalization and non-covalent functionalization), (ii) evaluate the adsorption performance of functional GO towards organic pollutants by taking aromatic pollutants and dyes as examples and (iii) discuss the regeneration property and adsorption mechanism of functional GO adsorbent. In addition, the problems of existing studies and future research directions are also identified briefly.

GRAPHICAL ABSTRACT

KEYWORDS:

• Nanomaterials
• adsorption
• surface modification
• pollutant
• wastewater treatment

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the Shandong Provincial Natural Science Foundation (No. ZR2021QE272), Taishan Scholars Program of Shandong Province, China (No. tsqn201812091) and Higher Educational Science and Technology Program of Shandong Province, China (No. 2020KJD003).

Data availability statement

The authors confirm that the data supporting the findings of this study are available within the article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Shandong Provincial Natural Science Foundation, China [grant number ZR2021QE272]; Taishan Scholars Program of Shandong Province, China [grant number tsqn201812091]; Higher Educational Science and Technology Program of Shandong Province, China [grant number 2020KJD003].