Preparation and Properties of Porous Composite of Hematite/Magnetite/Carbon with Eucalyptus Wood Biotemplate

Abstract

By using eucalyptus wood biotemplate, a novel porous composite material of iron oxides and carbon (PC-Fe/C) was manufactured for adsorption of oxoanion pollutants. The material's microstructure and characteristic were investigated by different characterization techniques. The experimental results show that the PC-Fe/C composite mainly consisted of hematite, magnetite, and carbon, and preserved the porous hierarchical texture of the wood with 70 ∼ 120 µm macropores, 4.1 ∼ 6.4 µm mesopores, and 0.1 ∼ 1.3 µm micropores. Its Brunauer-Emmtee-Teller (BET) surface area was 59.2 m² g⁻¹. The maximum adsorption capacities were 2.49, 2.96, and 0.69 mg g⁻¹ for arsenic(V), chromium(VI), and phosphorus(V), respectively. The adsorption capacities of the unpulverized material as a novel filtration adsorbent are comparable to fine particles of the pulverized material, natural, and synthetic iron oxides.

Keywords:

• Adsorption capacity
• Biomorph-genetic magnetic composite
• Eucalyptus wood template
• Hierarchical porous microstructure
• Iron oxide