Synthesis of magnetic yolk-shell mesoporous carbon architecture for the effective adsorption of sulfamethazine drug

- Magnetic yolk shell carbon (MYSC) architecture was fabricated by the carbonization of core double shell material.
- MYSC possesses high surface area, hollow cavity and paramagnetic property.
- Enhanced sulfamethazine (SMTz) adsorption capacity of 312 mg/g was achieved on MYSC.
- The cavity of the MYSC was responsible for the improved performance towards SMTz removal.

In this work, Fe3O4@C yolk-shell carbon architecture were fabricated in one pot sol-gel process and further examined as adsorbents for the removal of sulfamethazine. To understand yolk-shell structure on the adsorption properties of sulfamethazine, another adsorbent without hollow cavity, i.e., Fe3O4@SiO2@C carbon material, was also prepared for comparison. The adsorption results showed the yolk-shell carbon materials complied with the pseudo-second order kinetics model. Based on the Langmuir model the yolk shell material possess a Qmax of 312 mg g−1, which is higher than that of core-shell materials (236 mg g−1). Due to the magnetic property, the yolk-shell carbon materials can be retrieved facilely from the aqueous media by an external magnet and 89.1% of recovery can be achieved over five adsorption desorption cycles. Possessing high surface area, a well-defined interface of the material and central cavity the as-prepared material has proved to be a potentially eminent adsorbent for the broad scale removal of sulfamethazine from industrial processes.

239