Simultaneous elimination of multicomponent toxic industrial chemicals by Cu-carbon beads

Protecting the staff on site from exposure risk to toxic industrial chemicals (TICs) in an efficient way is of great significance. However, simultaneous removal of multicomponent TICs with different physical and chemical properties is a challenge for porous carbon materials. In this work, Cu-carbon beads with tailored porous structure and chemical property were synthesized via phase inversion-carbonization (PIC) route. The in-situ introduction of copper species was accomplished via coupling solidification-reduction of copper species and PIC process. The obtained Cu-carbon beads possessed uniform spherical shape (Φ1.3 mm) with good mechanical strength, developed porous structure and abundant chemical groups. Three kinds of TICs with different chemical properties, i.e. benzene (nonpolar), ethanol (polar) and H 2 S (inorganic), were selected as probes to evaluate the simultaneous elimination performance of Cu-carbon beads. The optimized Cu-beads-3 exhibited excellent performance for multicomponent TICs with capacities of 491.9 mg benzene/g, 192.1 mg ethanol/g and 76.2 mg H 2 S/g, representing 74.0, 60.3 and 99.2% capacities compared with monocomponent TICs. The enhanced adsorption of H 2 S were ascribed to chemisorption of copper species and basic groups on Cu-carbon beads. These results indicated that Cu-carbon beads would be a promising candidate for the simultaneous elimination of TICs with different chemical properties.