Adsorption and removal of bisphenol A, α-naphthol and β-naphthol from aqueous solution by Fe3O4@polyaniline core–shell nanomaterials

• Fe3O4@polyaniline was prepared by a two-step oxidative polymerization.
• Fe3O4@PANI has exhibited good adsorption for phenols by via π–π and electrostatic interaction.
• Provided a highly efficient and low cost removal method for phenols.

In present study, functional material, polyaniline coated Fe3O4 (Fe3O4@PANI), was synthesized using a simple two-step polymerization method, which was characterized by transmission electron microscopy(TEM), scanning electron microscope(SEM), FT-IR, X-ray diffraction(XRD), etc. Due to its structure, it would have strong affinities to the organics containing benzene ring because of π–π interactions and electrostatic interaction. This material was investigated to remove bisphenol A (BPA), α-naphthol and β-naphthol from water samples. The adsorption capacity (qmax) of the core–shell materials for bisphenol A (BPA), α-naphthol and β-naphthol was 23.0947, 28.7356, 9.1324 mg/g at 298 K, respectively. The kinetics results indicated that the adsorption process fit the pseudo-second-order kinetic model. The thermodynamic parameters ΔG for BPA, α-naphthol and β-naphthol were negative, suggesting that the adsorption reaction was spontaneous and endothermic in nature. The experimental results demonstrated that Fe3O4@PANI core–shell composites had great potential prospect for removing BPA, α-naphthol and β-naphthol from environmental water in the future.