Renewable cellulose aerogel embedded with nano-HFO for preferable phosphate capture from aqueous solution

Excess phosphate in water can cause eutrophication, which must be addressed. Despite many efforts devoted to the adsorptive removal of phosphate from water, the development of new adsorbents with high adsorption capacity is highly desirable. Herein, a novel nanocomposite was proposed for phosphate removal by confining hydrated ferric oxide (HFO) nanoparticles into a cellulose aerogel (CA) network named as HFO@CA. Benefiting from the characteristics of the low density and porous structure of CA, the internal surface of the nanocomposite is more accessible and thus improves the utilization of the HFO nanoparticles. Batch adsorption experiments were carried out to evaluate the phosphate uptake by the prepared adsorbent. The maximum adsorption capacity of HFO@CA occurs at near-acidic pH. With increasing temperature, the composite adsorbent is more favorable for phosphate adsorption. Moreover, the hybrid aerogel exhibited fast kinetic behavior for phosphate removal, which could be accurately depicted by pseudo-second-order model. HFO@CA shows excellent adsorption selectivity in solutions containing competitive anions at higher levels. In addition, five cycles of the phosphate adsorption experiments without obvious capacity loss indicated that HFO@CA has great regenerability. These results demonstrate that HFO@CA has a wide field of application with good prospects in phosphate removal from wastewater, which also provides a new strategy to prepare adsorbents with excellent performance using renewable cellulose resources. Graphical Abstract: [Figure not available: see fulltext.].