Fungal mycelium modified hierarchical porous carbon with enhanced performance and its application for removal of organic pollutants

In this study, fungal mycelium ( Aspergillus niger and Myrothecium verrucaria ) were used to prepare modified hierarchical porous carbons through a simple way, that is, the fungal mycelium were added to the medium and the composite materials were formed by combining the growth characteristics of the microorganism with agar. After carbonization and activation process, the obtained Aspergillus niger -agar hierarchical porous carbon (HCAAN, 4343.3 m 2 g −1 ) and Myrothecium verrucaria -agar hierarchical porous carbon (HCAMV, 3520.1 m 2 g −1 ) have ultra-high specific surface area. While the synthetic dye brilliant green (BG) and antibiotic tetracycline hydrochloride (THC) were used as organic pollutants models, the maximum adsorption capacities of HCAAN and HCAMV for BG were 3364.34 and 3144.56 mg g −1 , and for THC were 1441.29 and 1279.21 mg g −1 , respectively. This study proved that the modification of fungal mycelium could indeed improve the performances of the composite materials, and more importantly, it provided a new strategy for the exploration of other microbial composites.