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Hierarchically porous and anisotropic biochar from fast-growing balsa and paulownia woods for effective microplastic removal
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Scientists converted fast-growing balsa and paulownia wood into a specially structured biochar — a carbon-rich material made by heating plant matter without oxygen — that demonstrated exceptional ability to capture polystyrene microplastics from water, achieving an adsorption capacity of 533 mg per gram while retaining 88% efficiency after 30 reuse cycles. The material also performed well on actual fragments from plastic bags and tea bags, and worked across a wide range of water types. Biochar made from abundant, fast-growing wood offers a scalable, sustainable, and recyclable option for microplastic removal in water treatment.
Microplastics (MPs) pollution has emerged as a critical global environmental challenge. Biochar has emerged as a promising sustainable adsorbent for MPs removal, owing to its abundant raw material sources, high production yield, and recyclability. However, current limitations persist, including poor adsorption performance and ambiguous molecular interaction mechanisms. This study addresses these gaps through controlled pyrolysis of fast-growing balsa and paulownia woods to synthesize hierarchically porous biochar. The optimized biochar exhibited an exceptional adsorption capacity for polystyrene (PS) of 533.33 mg g, driven by multiple intermolecular interactions. Notably, it retained 88.4% of its initial capacity after 30 regeneration cycles. Moreover, the biochar exhibited robust MPs removal across diverse water matrices, low MPs concentrations (1 mg L), and real-plastic particles (plastic bags and tea bags). This work not only advances the rational design of sustainable MPs remediation materials, but also elucidates molecular-level adsorption mechanisms, providing both practical solutions for MPs mitigation and operational guidelines for water treatment facilities.
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