Development of sponge/graphene oxide composite as eco-friendly filter to remove methylene blue from aqueous media

• Published in: Applied surface science 2019-12, Vol.496, Article 143676
• Main Authors: Nayl, A.A., Abd-Elhamid, A.I., El-Shanshory, Ahmed A., Soliman, Hesham M.A., Kenawy, El-Refaie, Aly, H.F.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Eco-friendly composite filter; Sponge; Wastewater
• ISSN: 0169-4332; 1873-5584
• DOI: 10.1016/j.apsusc.2019.143676

A hierarchically porous structure composite (sponge-GO) is prepared by eco-friendly and a simple immersing of a local sponge in a good dispersed GO aqueous media. Where, appropriated weight of the sponge washed several times with distilled-water and ethanol, then immersed in GO suspended solution (3 mg/mL) and left to absorb all GO suspension. The resulted sponge-GO was dried at 70 °C for 72 h. and characterized by SEM, FTIR, Raman, TGA, and EDS. The characterization results indicate that GO sheets perfectly contact with the sponge Skelton network. The fabricated sponge-GO used as a filtration device in a laboratory made continuous filter system. Methylene blue (MB) is used as a chemical contaminant in wastewater to study the adsorption ability of our system. The parameters affecting on the sorption processes as, composite dose, concentration of dye, solution pH, temperature and NaCl dose were studied. The isotherm models, Langmuir, Freundlich and Tempkin, explained that the organic contaminate prefers to adsorbed as a monolayer with high sorption efficiency qe = 19.60 mg g−1. It is evident that this filter material possesses good capability and stability. The experimental studies illustrated that sponge-GO can be reused. The breakthrough curve, Yoon–Nelson model and comparison study were also investigated. [Display omitted] •A new Sponge-graphene oxide filter was simple fabricated as eco-friendly filter.•Sponge-GO filter success efficiently in removing of MB-dye.•The composite possess good stability and acceptable recycling behavior.•The filter successfully scaled up by using 1.0 L of the dye solution.