Highly Efficient Air Desulfurization on Self-Assembled Bundles of Copper Hydroxide Nanorods

Dimitrios A Giannakoudakis; Mingyung Jiang; Teresa J Bandosz

doi:10.1021/acsami.6b10544

Highly Efficient Air Desulfurization on Self-Assembled Bundles of Copper Hydroxide Nanorods

ACS Appl Mater Interfaces. 2016 Nov 23;8(46):31986-31994. doi: 10.1021/acsami.6b10544. Epub 2016 Nov 11.

Authors

Dimitrios A Giannakoudakis^{1

2}, Mingyung Jiang^{1

3}, Teresa J Bandosz^{1

2}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Chemistry, The City College of New York , New York, New York 10031, United States.
² Ph.D. Program in Chemistry, The Graduate Center of the City University of New York , New York, New York 10016, United States.
³ USAP Intern from School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, Cornell University , 356 Olin Hall, Ithaca, New York 14850, United States.

PMID: 27800680
DOI: 10.1021/acsami.6b10544

Abstract

Copper hydroxide and copper hydroxyl nitrate were successfully synthesized from copper nitrate. A slight alteration of a base addition pathway led to entirely different chemical and crystal structures. Structural, morphological, and surface chemical features were analyzed using various physical and chemical methods. The copper hydroxide texture consists of self-assembled bundles of nanorods with a diameter between 15 and 40 nm. They are stack together forming platelet-like particles. In the case of the copper hydroxyl nitrate, platelet-like particles with a smooth surface were detected. The fully hydroxylated sample showed a considerably higher surface area and mesoporous volume than those of copper hydroxyl nitrate. Both synthesized materials were used as air desulfurization media at moist or dry conditions. The results indicate a supreme chemical adsorption of H₂S on copper hydroxide. Moisture in air has a positive effect on the adsorption performance. In humid conditions, almost 0.9 mol H₂S/mol of Cu(OH)₂ was adsorbed. CuS with almost a stoichiometric ratio was a product of surface reactions. The color change of the powder from sapphire blue to dark brown during the adsorption can be used as a fast indication of the adsorbent exhaustion level.

Keywords: copper hydroxide; copper sulfide nanoparticles; desulfurization; hydrogen sulfide adsorption; metal hydroxide absorbent; self-assembled bundles of nanorods.