Three typical porous solid wastes, including livestock manure, crop straw, and coal mining waste, were used as raw materials to prepare cattle manure charcoal, straw charcoal, and coal gangue charcoal by low-oxygen controlling temperature carbonization and calcination. Batch adsorption experiments of sulfamethazine (SMZ) in water were carried out. Adsorption kinetics and isothermal adsorption equilibrium were used to investigate the adsorption characteristics of SMZ on cattle dung charcoal, straw charcoal, and coal gangue charcoal, and the adsorption mechanism was discussed by means of field-electron scanning electron microscope, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, Boehm titration, Brunauer-Emmett-Teller measurement, and zeta potentiometric titration. The results showed that the adsorption of SMZ on the three carbon materials reached equilibrium at 24 h. The adsorption kinetics of SMZ on three kinds of carbon materials agreed with the quasi-second-order kinetics equation. R2 ranged from 0.9968 to 0.9999, and the adsorption rate decreased with the decrease in effective adsorption sites on the surface of carbon materials. The adsorption process mainly consists of three steps:membrane diffusion, intraparticle diffusion, and the equilibrium stage. Both intraparticle diffusion and membrane diffusion control the adsorption rate. Isothermal adsorption is more consistent with the Freundlich model. R2 is between 0.9874 and 0.9997. It is mainly physical adsorption and spontaneous exothermic reaction. The maximum adsorption capacity of the three kinds of carbon materials was cattle dung carbon (19.64 mg·g-1) > coal gangue carbon (12.06 mg·g-1) > straw carbon (9.16 mg·g-1). The adsorption mechanism of SMZ on the three kinds of carbon materials mainly includes hydrogen bonding between molecules, surface electrostatic adsorption of multi-molecular layers, and pore filling. Of these, electrostatic adsorption is the main adsorption mechanism. The best adsorption performance of cattle manure charcoal may be due to its rich oxygen-containing functional groups, more negative charges, and larger specific surface area and pore volume.
Keywords: adsorption; characteristics; high temperature modification; solid waste; sulfamethazine.