Fabrication of free-standing bio-template mesoporous hybrid film for high and selective phosphate removal

An efficient and selective free-standing mesoporous hybrid film adsorbent is templated with nanocrystalline cellulose for the first time. The film material exhibited highly ordered chiral nematic structures and superior adsorption for phosphate. In the batch adsorption tests, the sorbent material was able to selectively adsorb phosphate due to lanthanum loading (from 4.21. wt% to 18.41. wt%). For adsorption kinetics studies, the adsorption followed a pseudo-second order model well, with particularly rapid adsorption observed in the case of phosphate. And the resulting adsorption isotherms of the sorbent was better represented by the Langmuir model than the Freundlich model. Moreover, the sorbent achieved high adsorption capacity within pH between 3.0 and 7.0. Also a high selectivity of phosphate was observed in coexisting anions system. The proposed film sorbent demonstrated a higher degree of reusability in cycle test and easy separation from the solution. In addition, the hybrid film revealed a fast phosphate adsorption in actual environmental sample at low phosphorus concentration.