Preparation of high-performance nitrogen doped porous carbon from cork biomass by K2CO3 activation for adsorption of rhodamine B

Biomass waste, an attractive renewable carbon source, has great potential for carbon reduction. In recent years, high-performance porous carbon materials prepared from agricultural and forestry waste have demonstrated significant promise for applications in the field of dye wastewater purification. In this study, cork waste from Quercus variabilis was utilized as a raw material, melamine as a nitrogen source, and K2CO3 as a green activator to prepare nitrogen-doped porous cork activated carbon (NCAC) with a honeycomb structure. The results showed that NCAC-900, activated at 900 °C, exhibited a highly porous structure with an optimal specific surface area of 2051.35 m2/g and a pore volume of 1.18 cm3/g. To evaluate its adsorption performance towards rhodamine B (RhB), collaborative activation and post-treatment were employed to enhance the adsorption capacity of the dyes. NCAC-900 demonstrated excellent removal efficiency, with a theoretical maximum adsorption capacity of 2552.52 mg/g (at an adsorbent dosage of 0.2 g/L) in a 300 mg/L solution. Nitrogen doping effectively improved the adsorption capacity for RhB, fitting well to the quasi-secondary kinetic model (R2 = 0.9973–0.9999) and Langmuir isotherm (R2 = 0.7697–0.9523) for the adsorption kinetics and equilibrium data. A comparison with the existing literature also revealed that NCAC-900 possessed a remarkably fast adsorption rate of 12.82 mg/g/min. Moreover, the resorption efficiency of NCAC-900 for RhB reached approximately 66.78% after five consecutive adsorption-desorption cycles. Additionally, the obtained nitrogen-doped cork activated carbon exhibited impressive adsorption capabilities of anionic dye Congo red (CR, qm=1499.14 mg/g) and cationic dye methylene blue (MB, qm=571.54 mg/g). In conclusion, our work presented a promising method for preparing excellent NCAC as an efficient adsorbent for wastewater dyes, offering new ideas and theoretical foundations for the high-value utilization of cork materials and the development of cork activated carbon.