Constructing hydrothermal carbonization coatings on carbon fibers with controllable thickness for achieving tunable sorption of dyes and oils via a simple heat-treated route

Juntao Song; Wenbo Han; Shun Dong; Cheng Fang; Yehong Cheng; Dazhao Liu; Xinghong Zhang

doi:10.1016/j.jcis.2019.10.047

Constructing hydrothermal carbonization coatings on carbon fibers with controllable thickness for achieving tunable sorption of dyes and oils via a simple heat-treated route

J Colloid Interface Sci. 2020 Feb 1:559:263-272. doi: 10.1016/j.jcis.2019.10.047. Epub 2019 Oct 14.

Authors

Juntao Song¹, Wenbo Han², Shun Dong¹, Cheng Fang¹, Yehong Cheng¹, Dazhao Liu¹, Xinghong Zhang³

Affiliations

¹ National Key Laboratory of Science and Technology for National Defence on Advanced Composites in Special Environments, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin 150080, China.
² National Key Laboratory of Science and Technology for National Defence on Advanced Composites in Special Environments, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin 150080, China. Electronic address: wbhan@hit.edu.cn.
³ National Key Laboratory of Science and Technology for National Defence on Advanced Composites in Special Environments, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin 150080, China. Electronic address: zhangxh@hit.edu.cn.

PMID: 31634670
DOI: 10.1016/j.jcis.2019.10.047

Abstract

Tremendous efforts have been dedicated to developing sorbents for water remediation due to their high efficiency and non-secondary pollution. However, the majority of sorbents still face the challenges of complex processing, low mechanical strength and volume absorption. Hence, the functional hydrothermal carbonization coatings (HTCCs) were prepared on carbon fibers in carbon fiber braid via a facile hydrothermal carbonization process of widely sourced carbohydrate to obtain a robust sorbent, which possessed the controllable microstructure and composition for various requirements of water remediation. The gradient surface structure of carbon fiber braid with interior smooth coatings carbon fibers and exterior rough surface could be fabricated at pH value of 1. The HTCCs-carbon fiber braid had superior yield strength and compressive strength. By regulating the reaction process, the yield strength could range from 0.044 MPa to 0.235 MPa and the max compressive strength change from 0.198 MPa to 1.113 MPa. The HTCCs-carbon fiber braid showed excellent adsorption for Rhodamine B with a high removal degree of 98.5%, which kept more than 90% even after 10 squeezing adsorption cycles. The HTCCs-carbon fiber braid could be adjusted to effectively absorb oil pollutants from water by a facile heat treatment. After heat treatment, the HTCCs-carbon fiber braid exhibited excellent volume absorption capacity for contaminants, which could change from 83.9% to 88.5%. Thus, the HTCCs-carbon fiber braid prepared by a green, high-efficiency and low-cost process has great potential for sorption multiple contaminations in water by virtue of the combination of controllable carbonaceous coatings and robust carbon fiber braid.

Keywords: Biomass; Carbon coatings; Carbon fiber braid; Water remediation.