Oleic Acid-Tailored Geopolymer Microspheres with Tunable Porous Structure for Enhanced Removal from Tetracycline in Saline Water

Xiaoyun Wang, Zheng Zhang and Yuanyuan Ge
Additional contact information
Xiaoyun Wang: School of Chemistry & Chemical Engineering, Guangxi Key Lab of Petrochemical Resource Processing and Process Intensification Technology, Guangxi University, Nanning 530004, China
Zheng Zhang: School of Chemistry & Chemical Engineering, Guangxi Key Lab of Petrochemical Resource Processing and Process Intensification Technology, Guangxi University, Nanning 530004, China
Yuanyuan Ge: School of Chemistry & Chemical Engineering, Guangxi Key Lab of Petrochemical Resource Processing and Process Intensification Technology, Guangxi University, Nanning 530004, China

Sustainability, 2022, vol. 14, issue 11, 1-17

Abstract: Tetracycline (TC) in the water body poses a huge threat to the ecological environment. There is a great challenge to develop highly efficient, green, low-cost and reusable adsorbents for TC removal from saline water. Herein, metakaolin-based geopolymer microspheres (MM) modified by oleic acid were proposed for the enhanced adsorption of TC from saline water. Experimental and characterization results showed that the introduction of oleic acid into the MM effectively adjusted the specific surface area, pore volume and zeta potential of the MM, thus accelerating the adsorption rate and enhancing the TC adsorption capacity of the MM. The adsorption process fitted well to the pseudo-second-order kinetic and Langmuir isothermal models. The Langmuir adsorption capacity of TC by the optimal MM, namely MM3 (0.3%, oleic acid), reached 645.7 mg·g −1 at 298 K, which was higher than many reported adsorbents. The adsorption process was endothermic and spontaneous. The MM3 had good adsorption performance of TC from saline water and regeneration performance. Moreover, the breakthrough curves of the MM3 in a column system were correlative with the Thomas and Yoon–Nelson models. The adsorption mechanisms of TC by the MM3 involved Van der Waals forces, electrostatic interactions, hydrogen–bonding interactions, and ion exchange.

Keywords: oleic acid; geopolymer microspheres; adsorption; tetracycline (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14/11/6705/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14/11/6705/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:14:y:2022:i:11:p:6705-:d:828225

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().