(608b) Surfactant-Free Synthesized Mesoporous Carbon Nanocomposites Towards Efficient Pollutants Removal from Water

Water pollution is an increasingly serious issue for human beings and ecosystems. Materials with mesoporous structure are designed to remove the pollutants from wastewater with higher efficiency. Current techniques to control the mesoporous structure still rely on the template method, which involves the usage of expensive templates to regulate the mesoporous structure of desired materials and corrosive chemicals to etch out the template afterwards. Without template, mesoporous structure can be rarely achieved, which remains a challenge so far. Here, we developed a template-free method to synthesize mesoporous carbon nanocomposites without using templates and corrosive chemicals. More importantly, widely available natural resources, such as wood, cotton and etc, were used as carbon precursor and processed into mesoporous structure by a catalytic graphitization process. These nanocomposite materials show unique mesoporous structure and excellent pollutants removal property from wastewater. Highly efficient removal of both organic (organic dye) and inorganic (heavy metal ions) pollutants is demonstrated by kinetic study. This new technology provides a facile and economic approach to manufacture highly efficient adsorbents with multi-contaminants removal capacity.