Recently, A team led by Prof. WU Zhengyan from Institute of Intelligent Machines,Hefei Institutes of Physical Science fabricated novel functional biochar composites (FBCs) using two solid waste-red mud and corn straw-and exploited them in acidic dye wastewater treatment. The paper was published in Journal of Cleaner Production.
Red mud is a bauxite residue generated from the Bayer process in the aluminum industry. More than 2 billion metric tons of RM was piled up at random globally, causing waste of land resources and severe environmental pollution. Corn straw is an ordinary agricultural solid waste with more than 200 million metric tons generated annually in China. The exploitation of solid waste is the best way to dispose of it. In recent years, many methods have been developed to utilize red mud or corn straw, but those methods are not widely promoted and used. Therefore, it is necessary to create a novel method to reuse red mud and corn straw.
In this work, functional biochar composites (FBCs) was fabricated by the co-pyrolysis of red mud and corn straw and exploited in acidic dye wastewater treatment. The FBCs showed excellent neutralization performance due to containing alkaline substances (mainly CaO) and adsorption capacity on acidic dyes due to its high surface area. Moreover FBCs could be collected by magnet because it contains zero-valent iron.
This work provides an efficient approach to reuse waste and a novel technology for acidic dye wastewater treatment.
This research was supported by the Science and Technology Service Programs of Chinese Academy of Sciences and the National Key R&D Program of China.
Link to the paper: Functional biochar fabricated from waste red mud and corn straw in China for acidic dye wastewater treatment
Diagram of the fabrication process and mechanism of FBCs. (Image by Gao Yujie)
Contact:
ZHAO Weiwei
Hefei Institutes of Physical Science (http://english.hf.cas.cn/)
Email: annyzhao@ipp.ac.cn