A large amount of cow hair solid waste is produced in leather production, and a reasonable treatment should be developed to reduce the pollution. In this study, cow hair waste was utilized as the carbon precursor, and N2 was determined to be the most appropriate atmosphere for biochar preparation. We performed a comparison of the properties of biochars that were prepared with different methods, including direct pyrolysis, KOH activation, and the MgO template method. The characterization results show that the highest specific surface area reaches 1753.075 m2/g. Subsequently, the keratin that was extracted from cow hair and purified was used to prepare a biochar with the MgO template method, obtaining an orderly sponge structure. The biochar from cow hair waste was further used to absorb direct blue dye wastewater, and its adsorption capacity reached 1477 mg/g after 10 h with a high efficiency of regeneration. This study successfully utilized keratin-containing hair waste and provides a new source for synthesizing carbon materials for dye wastewater treatment.
Keywords: biochar; cow hair waste; dye adsorption; high specific surface area; keratin.