Novel composite in situ obtained from coal gasification coarse slag and its mechanism of removing phosphate

A novel low-cost hematite-silicon mesoporous composite (HSMC) was synthesized in situ from coal gasification coarse slag (CGCS) via acid modification and its potential for phosphate removal from wastewater was studied. Calcium, aluminum and iron in CGCS were activated by hydrochloric acid, and formed crystalline hematite on the quartz and silicates substrates. Compared with traditional methods of preparing hematite, this in-situ preparation method effectively utilized the iron in CGCS instead of requiring added iron salts, which is highly cost-effective. The specific surface area increased from 4 m2/g for CGCS to 67 m2/g for HSMC, greatly enhancing the phosphate removal ability of HSMC. The maximum adsorption capacity of HSMC for phosphate was 28.62 mg/g, which is more than 28 times higher than that of CGCS. The HSMC had a high point of zero charge (pHPZC) of 7.5, providing good phosphate removal performance over a wide pH range. The phosphate removal mechanism of HSMC mainly involves ligand exchange induced by the large number of hydroxyl groups, inner-sphere complexation induced by the presence of major metal (hydr)oxides, the precipitation of calcium and aluminum with phosphate groups, and some electrostatic adsorption induced by the positively charged surface. The contribu tion of precipitation to the phosphate removal ability was approximately 27 %. This study provides a new method for the development of phosphate adsorbents while recycling CGCS.(c) 2022 Published by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of King Saud University. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).