Biological Self-Assembled Hyphae/Starch Porous Carbon Composites for Removal of Organic Pollutants from Water

Abstract

In this work, based on the growth characteristics of fungi, the composite material FH/CQS was formed by the fungal hypha (FH) of Aspergillus niger (AN) and Myrothecium verrucaria (MV) with carbonized quinoa starch (CQS) through biological self-assembly. Then, two hyphae/starch porous carbon materials (PCCQS-AN and PCQS-MV) were successfully prepared by using FH/CQS as template. The characterization test results showed that the composite porous carbon had higher specific surface area and pore volume than quinoa starch-based porous carbon (PCQS) and FH of AN and MV. The adsorption experiments which using synthetic dye Rhodamine B (RhB) and antibiotic Tetracycline hydrochloride (TCH) as model pollutants showed that the adsorption capacities of PCCQS-AN and PCCQS-MV were higher than those of PCQS. In addition, the removal rate of PCCQS-AN and PCCQS-MV remained above 50% after 5 cycles, which were higher than that of PCQS. These work prove that the method is advanced and provide a new feasible direction for the development and research of other microorganism composites.

Keywords: Biological self-assembly, Quinoa starch, porous carbon, Performance, adsorption