Highly efficient removal of toxic organic dyes, chemical solvents and oils by mesoporous exfoliated graphite: Synthesis and mechanism

Exfoliated graphite (EG) has been receiving much global attention in the last decade because of the growing number of potential applications. However, the production of EG has several disadvantages such as, requiring more than one chemical compound, consuming more chemical quantity, time and energy, etc. Here, we report a simple low cost one compound based rapid and efficient production of EG using microwave irradiation technique. As prepared EG material shows multifunctional outstanding performance including adsorption of various toxic organic dyes and absorption of various organic solvents, as well as, oils. The maximum adsorption capacity reaches 384.6 (±10.2), 222.32 (±8.6), 151.51 (±9.2) and 196.08 (±5.4) mg/g for malachite green (MG), methylene blue (MB), rhodamine 6 g (Rh6 g) and congo red (CR) dyes at equilibrium. It shows an efficient flow through filtration of dye contaminated water, showing potential as the best technique for industrial waste water treatment. It absorbs 40-120 g of various chemical solvents and oils per one gram of EG. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report on single compound based rapid and efficient synthesis of EG in about one minute with multifunctional outstanding application performance.