Adsorption of uremic toxins using biochar for dialysate regeneration

Numerous studies have shown that patients with COVID-19 have a high incidence of renal dysfunction. However, the dialysis supplies, including dialysates, are also severely inadequate in hospitals at the pandemic centers. Therefore, there is an urgent need to develop materials that can efficiently and rapidly remove toxins and thus regenerate dialysate to make this vital resource remains readily available. In this work, by simple carbonization and activation treatment, the porous activated carbon from waste rubber seed shell (RAC) was prepared. The adsorption results showed that the maximum adsorption capacities of the obtained RAC for creatinine and uric acid were 430 mg/g and 504 mg/g, respectively. Significantly, the adsorption process can be close to the equilibrium state within 0.5 h, which proved the ultra-fast adsorption response capacity of RAC. Further, the thermodynamics analysis results showed that both the creatinine and uric acid adsorption processes were monolayer, exothermic, and spontaneous. The adsorption kinetics results indicated that the adsorption process of the two uremic toxins followed the pseudo-second-order rate model and was dominated by chemisorption. The instrument analysis results reflected the efficient adsorption of the RAC for the above uremic toxins which might be due to the dipole–dipole interaction between the dipolar oxygen-containing groups of the surface of RAC and the dipoles of the toxins. Moreover, the formed hydrogen bonds between the oxygen groups and the toxins also played an important role. In all, the as-prepared RAC has the potential to efficiently remove major toxins from the dialysate and can be used in in vitro dialysis of numerous patients during the current COVID-19 pandemic.