Fabrication of Attapulgite-modified waste newspaper-based cellulose aerogel (ATP-WNCA) for efficient methylene blue adsorption

Attapulgite-waste newspaper cellulose aerogel (ATP-WNCA) was fabricated. • ATP-WNCA got 99.9% adsorption removal ratio of MB. • ATP-WNCA got an MB adsorption capacity of 59.61 mg/g (6.5 times that of pure WNCA). • Due to its unique 3D porous structure, ATP-WNCA has multiple adsorption mechanisms. In this study, waste newspaper cellulose (WNC) was extracted from waste newspapers and compounded with natural attapulgite (ATP) to develop a novel three-dimensional porous composite material attapulgite-waste newspaper cellulose aerogel (ATP-WNCA). Cellulose was obtained from waste newspapers through an acid-base combined treatment, and ATP-WNCA was successfully prepared using a sol-gel method with a freeze-drying process. The prepared aerogel material was characterized by XRD, FT-IR, and XPS techniques, and the results indicated that in ATP-WNCA, the rod like fiber of attapulgite is used as the skeleton, and cross-linked with cellulose to form aerogel. Its thermal stability was significantly enhanced, and its specific surface area was dramatically increased from 9.56 m²/g of WNC to 127.91 m²/g of ATP-WNCA. The adsorption performance experiments of ATP-WNCA for methylene blue (MB) demonstrated that under the optimal conditions of adsorbent dosage of 900 mg/L, temperature of 30°C, and pH of 11, ATP-WNCA got 99.9% adsorption removal ratio of MB, with an adsorption capacity of 59.61 mg/g (6.5 times that of pure WNCA). According to the experimental and adsorption isotherm fitting and kinetic fitting results, the adsorption mechanism mainly includes electrostatic adsorption, ion exchange, pore filling, hydrogen bonding, and surface complexation. Different from prior waste cellulose adsorbents suffering from low surface area, poor thermal resistance, this work innovatively employs natural ATP as a reinforcing skeleton to overcome the inherent limitations of pure waste newspaper cellulose aerogels; the ATP-WNCA exhibits competitive MB capture performance against some reported composite adsorbents and establishes a facile, cost-effective and sustainable strategy for converting waste paper into high-efficiency organic dye remediation materials, substantially advancing the development of biomass-clay composite adsorbents for practical wastewater treatment. Download: Download high-res image (366KB) Download: Download full-size image