The influence of surface modification on the physicochemical characteristics of carbon substrate for environmental applications

Abstract

In this work, we reported the influence of iron impregnation and surface oxidation on the physicochemical properties including surface, spectral, and the adsorptive removal of dyes. Among various characterization techniques, the surface area, pHpzc, VSM, TC, XPS and SEM analyses were conducted to elaborate on the corresponding characteristics of these materials. A decrease in surface area, but an increase in the pore diameter of FeAC was observed upon the impregnation of iron precursor and surface oxidation. Similarly, the pHpzc of FeAC was found to be lower (pHpzc 4.3) than that of the AC (pHpzc 7.4). However, the saturated magnetization for FeAC (34 memu/g) was significantly higher than AC (7 memu/g) due to the possible formation of iron oxides on the surface. Meanwhile, the wide scan XPS spectra revealed the existence of different oxidation states of the metals on the FeAC. The adsorptive removal of two model dyes (Methylene Blue and Methyl Orange) were examined to illustrate the dye interactions with the test materials. A substantial increase in the MB remova was observed using FeAC, while the convers was true for MO, depending on the surface characteristics of both AC and FeAC.