Novel cobalt-carbon@silica adsorbent

Recently, carbon nanostructures are of high importance due to their unique characteristics and interesting applications. Pyrolysis of anthracene with cobalt complex Co(2,2'-bipy)Cl₂ (1), where (2,2'-bipy) is 2,2'-bipyridine, in the absence and presence of silica gave in high yield cobalt-carbon nanocomposite CoCNC (2) and CoCNC@SiO₂ (3) at 600 °C and 850 °C, respectively. They were characterized using SEM, TEM, PXRD, Raman and XPS. (3) and (2) contain core-shell cobalt(0)/cobalt oxide-graphite with or without silica support. PXRD indicates that (2) contains crystalline hexagonal α-Co and cubic β-Co phases while (3) contains only cubic β-Co phase and silica. The structure of (2) is 3D hierarchical carbon architecture wrapping spherical and elliptical cobalt nanoparticles. (3) consists of graphitized structures around cobalt nanoparticles embedded in the silica matrix. XPS reveals that the nanocomposites contain oxygen functional groups that enhance uptake of cationic dyes. CoCNC@SiO₂ (3) has higher capacity and thus is better adsorbent of Basic Violet 3 than CoCNC (2). The Langmuir adsorption capacity of (3) is 19.4 mg g^-1 while column capacity is 12.55 mg g^-1 at 25 °C. Freundlich isotherm and pseudo-second-order kinetic models fit well the adsorption data. Thermodynamics indicate that adsorption(3) is exothermic. Column regeneration was tested for three cycles and Yan et al. was found the best kinetic model.