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Updated: Feb 16, 2026

Visible-light Induced Reduction of Graphene Oxide Using Plasmonic Nanoparticle
Published on: September 22, 2015
Efficient removal of tetracycline with KOH-activated graphene from aqueous solution
Jie Ma1, Yiran Sun1, Fei Yu1,2
1State Key Laboratory of Pollution Control and Resource Reuse, College of Environmental Science and Engineering, Tongji University, 1239 Siping Road, Shanghai 200092, People's Republic of China.
Abstract:
Activated graphene absorbents with high specific surface area (SSA) were prepared by an easy KOH-activated method, and were applied in absorbing antibiotics, such as tetracycline (TC). After activation, many micropores were introduced to graphene oxide sheets, leading to higher SSA and many new oxygen-containing functional groups, which gave KOH-activated graphene excellent adsorption capacity (approx. 532.59 mg g-1) of TC. Further study on the adsorption mechanism showed that the Langmuir isotherm model and the pseudo-second-order kinetic model fitted with experiment data. To further understand the adsorption process, the effects of solid-liquid ratio, pH, ionic strength and coexisting ions were also investigated. The results revealed that, compared with pH and ionic strength, solid-liquid ratio and coexisting ions (Cu2+, CrO42-) had more significant influence over the adsorption performance. The findings provide guidance for application of KOH-activated graphene as a promising alternative adsorbent for antibiotics removal from aqueous solutions.
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