CTAB-assisted fabrication of hierarchical flower-like magnesium oxide adsorbent for enhanced removal performance towards phosphate

In this work, a series of hierarchical flower-like magnesium oxide (MgO) adsorbents were successfully fabricated in a cetyltrimethylammonium bromide (CTAB) assisted solvothermal route using hexamethylenetetramine (HMTA) as a precipitating agent. Effects of CTAB feeding amount on the structure, morphology, pore structure, and corresponding adsorption behavior were investigated. The hierarchical gardenias flower-like MgO demonstrated a surface area of 336.54 m2 center dot g -1 at a minimum ratio of the CTAB/Mg2+ was 0.02 in the reaction system. The hierarchical MgO phosphate removal capacity was 348.32 mg center dot g -1, which followed the pseudo-second-order and Freundlich isotherm model obtained from the large surface area and appropriate pore size. The value of n also suggests the feasible nature of phosphate adsorption under the examined conditions. Indeed, this CTAB assisted solvothermal method can provide a new understanding to tune the desired properties of a material by merely adjusting the reaction parameters of MgO.(c) 2022 Chongqing University. Publishing services provided by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of KeAi Communications Co. Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ ) Peer review under responsibility of Chongqing University