Synthesis of Mesoporous Fe3O4 and Fe3O4/C Nanocomposite for Removal of Hazardous Dye from Aqueous Media

The magnetic mesoporous Fe3O4 and Fe3O4/Carbon Nanocomposite (Fe3O4/C) are synthesized by a facile hydrothermal method in one- step and are used for methylene blue dye removal. Nanomaterials are characterized by field-emission scanning electron microscope (FE-SEM), transition electron microscopy (TEM), energy dispersive X-ray spectrometry (EDX), X-ray diffraction (XRD), Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR) and Vibrating sample magnetometry (VSM). The specific surface area of the samples and mean pore diameter were measured via Brunauer–Emmett– Teller (BET) surface area measurement technique. To improve the adsorption performance some important parameters affecting dye removal are optimized. Maximum capacity for methylene blue (MB) adsorption on to Fe3O4 and Fe3O4/C Nanocomposite is 169.5 and 208.33 mg. g-1, respectively, which compared to some same recent reports, has a better adsorption capacity. Thermodynamic parameters (ΔG°, ΔΗ° and ΔS°) were calculated and the result showed a spontaneous, endothermic and increase in randomness for dye adsorption. The obtained data has the best fitting with Langmuir isotherm and the kinetic analysis has the best fit by pseudo-second order model.