Fluffy honeycomb-like activated carbon from popcorn with high surface area and well-developed porosity for ultra-high efficiency adsorption of organic dyes

Fluffy honeycomb-like activated carbon with ultra-high surface area and well-developed hierarchical porous structure is simply prepared from popcorn by NaOH activation as adsorbent for dye removal. The popcorn has an unique fluffy structure, which originates from the corn via a rapid puffing process and is reserved during the following carbonization and NaOH activation. The ultra-high surface area and developed hierarchical porous structure make PDAC-4 show an outstanding adsorption capacity of 7765 mg·g−1 for Rhodamine B (2500 mg·L−1), which is several times higher than those of the adsorbents ever reported. Moreover, PDAC-4 also has excellent adsorption performance for other dyes, such as Congo Red, Methylene Blue and Methyl Orange. The superior adsorption performance of PDACs to organic dyes opens its potential application in the purification of dye wastewater.