Pollutant Diesel Soot Derived Onion-like Nanocarbons for the Adsorption of Organic Dyes and Environmental Assessment of Treated Wastewater

Abstract

The presented finding offers a sustainable approach for the successful utilization of the pollutant soot in the form of waste black carbon (BC), collected from the exhausts of a diesel engine as an efficient adsorbent. The morphology of the as-isolated diesel particulate soot was observed in nanosize consisting of an Onion like Nano-Carbon (ONC) structure. The ONC were transformed into water-soluble Onion like Nano-Carbon (wsONC) via the simplest method of oxidation. For applicability as an adsorbent, wsONC was used for the removal of three cationic organic dyes, methylene blue (MB), crystal violet (CV), and rhodamine B (RhB). Among the three cationic dyes, MB showed significant results compared with the other two. A small amount of wsONC was found to be capable of removing ∼100 mg L–1 of MB within the time of ∼60 min. While with CV and RhB, the removal efficiency was observed to be ∼60 mg L–1 and ∼40 mg L–1, respectively. In a comparative adsorption analysis, the performance of wsONC was ∼2.5 times higher than the as isolated ONC. Another novelty associated with the present finding is the uses of the treated wastewater for watering the Triticum aestivum (wheat) and Cicer arietinum (gram) plants for the initial 15 days. Compared to the dye water, the treated wastewater plants showed healthy growth.

Carbon Nanomaterials Derived from Black Carbon Soot: A Review of Materials and Applications

“…On the other hand, the percentage of surface carbon decreases from ∼93.2 to ∼84%, indicating heavy functionalization. The short scan spectra of C 1s and O 1s show different oxygen bindings from Figure . A similar XPS result supporting surface functionalization was observed by Ray et al in which they synthesized CNPs using acid treatment of CS …”

“…Guntur et al. used this Soxhlet purified soot for the oxidative treatment to make it water-soluble ONC (wsONC) . Surface functionalization concerning the significant increase in the surface oxygenous contents of oxidized soot (compared to the insoluble DS) was studied by XPS analysis.…”

“…XPS analysis of ONC and wsONC. Reproduced with permission from ref . Copyright 2020 American Chemical Society.…”

“…Many reports are available related to the extraction of different allotropes of nanocarbons from various soot sources such as small branched carbon nanotubes (CNTs) , from kerosene soot (KS) and kitchen soot (kit-soot), graphene nanosheets (GNSs) , from petrol soot (PS), carbon nanoonions (CNOs) or onion-like nanocarbons (ONCs), , and carbon dots (CD) from diesel soot (DS) and carbon nanorods (CNRs) , from castor oil soot (cas-soot), and so forth. These low-cost nanocarbons have shown potential applications in various domains like in preparing of electrode materials for white-light emission, biomedical/bioimaging applications, photodegradation/adsorption of organic pollutants, − energy storage and harvesting, high-performance solar evaporation devices, metal-ion sensing, water treatment, as a fertilizer, and superamphiphobic material …”

Carbon Graphitization: Towards Greener Alternatives to Develop Nanomaterials for Targeted Drug Delivery

“…Recent works reported the isolation of CNOs from diesel soot by a Soxhlet purification of the as-collected particulate, to be used for bioimaging and Cr(VI) sensing [ 74 ], strain sensing [ 75 ], and dye removal [ 76 ]. Graphene nanosheets for the photocatalytic removal of dyes were also obtained by Soxhlet purification of diesel pollutant soot [ 132 , 133 ].…”