Edible fungus slag derived nitrogen-doped hierarchical porous carbon as a high-performance adsorbent for rapid removal of organic pollutants from water.

In this work, agricultural waste edible fungus slag derived nitrogen-doped hierarchical porous carbon (EFS-NPC) was prepared by a simple carbonization and activation process. Owing to the biodegradation and infiltrability of hyphae, this EFS-NPC possessed an ultra-high specific surface area (3342 m/g), large pore volume (1.84 cm/g) and abundant micropores and mesopores. The obtained EFS-NPC could effectively adsorb bisphenol A (BPA) with the maximal adsorption capacity of 1249 mg/g and the removal process reached 89.9% of the equilibrium uptake in the first 0.5 h. Besides, the EFS-NPC showed much better removal performance towards 2,4-dichlorophenol (2,4-DCP) and methylene blue (MB) than commercial activated carbons (Norit RO 0.8 and DARCO granular activated carbon). Furthermore, adsorption isotherms, thermodynamics and kinetics researches indicated that the adsorption process of BPA was monolayer, exothermic and spontaneous. This research has given evidence that the low-cost EFS-NPC can serve as a high-efficient adsorbent for removing organic contaminants from water.