Sustainable nanocomposite of PAC/Fe3O4-coated 3 O 4-coated geotextile using plasma treatment technique for phenol adsorption application

This study aims to present a novel and enhanced geotextile structure that is simultaneously synthesized and coated employing powder-activated carbon (PAC) and Fe3O4 3 O 4 nanomaterial. Subsequently, the capability of GTX/ PAC + Fe3O4 3 O 4 nanocomposite to adsorb phenol pollutants from soil and aqueous environments is investigated in the present study. Although geotextile has been widely used in soil for filtration and barrier applications, no adsorption capacity was reported in the literature. Accordingly, the present study intends to modify the geotextile's surface through plasma technique to improve its hydrophilic properties and effectively bond with the nanocoating composite. To check the performance of the proposed nanocoated-geotextile, various characterization tests are considered, including contact angle, FTIR-ATR, SEM-EDX, and BET. Regarding batch tests, different critical parameters are studied, such as solution pH, the dose of adsorbent, contact time, temperature, and initial concentration on the phenol capacity adsorption. Based on the experimental findings, the proposed nanocoating composite on the geotextile significantly improved the phenol adsorption capacity. Also, various vital parameters were optimized through batch tests with a maximum phenol adsorption capacity of 17.32 mg/g at pH 6 solution, an adsorbent dose of 2.34 gr, a contact time of 75 min, and a concentration of 100 mg/L. Among the isotherm models assessed, the Langmuir model (R2 2 = 0.99) best fits the experimental results. The kinetics analysis showed that the pseudo-second-order model agreed with the experimental results (R2 2 = 0.99). The thermodynamic results indicated that the adsorption process in the temperature range of 25-45 degrees C was spontaneous and exothermic. The GTX/PAC + Fe3O4 3 O 4 nanocomposite showed high recoverability with five consecutive repetitions, maintaining 97.5% of its initial phenol adsorption capacity.