Reduced graphene oxide enhanced magnetic nanocomposites for removal of carbamazepine

Ferrite, as a kind of common magnetic adsorbent, always tend to reuniting and lead to the poor performance for removing contaminant in aqueous. Meanwhile, reduced graphene oxide (rGO), a high-efficiency adsorbent used for water treatment, is hydrophobic and easy to stack because of the Van der Waals force, resulting in the low adsorption capacity. Herein, we prepare the magnetic CoFe 2 O 4 /rGO nanocomposites to solve the reuniting of CoFe 2 O 4 and stacking of rGO simultaneously. The rGO nanosheets can improve the dispersion of CoFe 2 O 4 nanoparticles. As sorbent, the adsorption behaviors of carbamazepine on the nanocomposites can be fitted well by the Langmuir and pseudo-second-order kinetic models. In addition, the CoFe 2 O 4 /rGO nanocomposites show enhanced adsorption performance than that of the pure CoFe 2 O 4 nanoparticles, and the loading of rGO can affect their adsorption performance. The adsorption of carbamazepine on CoFe 2 O 4 /rGO is exothermic and mainly controlled by π–π interaction and hydrogen bond interaction. Furthermore, the CoFe 2 O 4 /rGO can be used to remove other organic pollutants simultaneously. Finally, the nanocomposites can be collected by external magnet, and the regenerated nanocomposites still showed a high adsorption capacity retention (90%) after five cycles.