Incorporation of humic acid into biomass derived carbon for enhanced adsorption of phenol

In the present work, the biomass derived carbon decorated with humic acid (HC), was synthesized through impregnation method for the adsorption of phenol from water environment. Humic acids contain more oxygen-containing functional groups and hydrogen bonds, which promotes the binding between HC and phenol molecules. The results indicated that the adsorption performance of HC to phenol was better than that of commercial activated carbon. Moreover, in addition to physical absorption, the chemical reaction between carboxylic groups on the carbon surface and hydroxyl in phenol also played an important role during the process. The adsorption behavior of HC was described by equilibrium and kinetics parameters. Pseudo-second order model can describe the adsorption process well. Langmuir model was more suitable for the equilibrium adsorption data fitting, indicating that the adsorption mechanism of phenol on carbon surface tends to be monolayer adsorption. Considering practical application, UV(254), chemical oxygen demand (COD) and ammonia from raw wastewater were selected as target contaminants and the corresponding adsorption experiments were carried out. The results displayed that HC exhibited excellent adsorption performance, especially for UV(254), indicating that as-prepared carbon material had potential application for the control of certain organic pollutants in actual wastewater.