Functionalization of mesoporous carbons derived from pomelo peel as capacitive electrodes for preferential removal/recovery of copper and lead from contaminated water

Water is not only a valuable resource that is needed to sustain life, but also an essential ingredient in many engineering processes, which unavoidably leads to large volumes of water being contaminated. To achieve safe discharge and also recover valuable “pollutants”, better performing sorbents are needed to rapidly and efficiently decontaminate water while generating minimal secondary wastes. Bio-sorbents derived from pomelo peel were functionalized with pyrrolic-N (BNC-5 electrode) and pyridinic-N (BNC-6 electrode) to enhance electroadsorption and selectivity of Pb2+ and Cu2+. The interaction between soft acid ions (Pb2+) and soft base sites (pyrrolic-N) contributed to a strong chemisorption that elevated the electroadsorption capacity to 2.0 mmol g−1 for Pb2+ at an applied voltage of 1.2 V. With fast removal kinetics (0.077 g mg−1 min−1 of Pb2+), the BNC-5 sorbent performed comparably to other N-doped sorbents prepared using graphene. The large adsorption–desorption hysteresis of BNC-5 in responding to the applied electric voltage confirmed the nature of chemisorption. The results showed only 32.4% of the adsorbed ions being desorbed from the sorbent by reducing the applied voltage to 0 V, but reached almost complete desorption (98.5% of adsorbed ions) at –0.8 V. When operated in adsorption–desorption cycle mode, BNC-5 after ∼ 400 cycles maintained a capacity retention 80%. After 400 cycles, the electrode capacity was almost fully restored (98.7%) by only mild chemical washing (0.1 M HNO3) of the sorbent and the cycling performance maintained. The study demonstrated the robustness of the sorbent over 1200 cycles and hence the potential to successfully convert waste into high-performance materials for large-scale remediation strategies of contaminated wastewater using CDI.