This new review takes a deep dive into how engineered carbon surfaces are tackling toxic metals, industrial gases, and soil contaminants while overcoming stability and cost barriers.
Study: Study on the Mechanism and Modification of Carbon-Based Materials for Pollutant Treatment. Image Credit: Christian Vinces/Shutterstock.com
A recent review in Materials explores how carbon-based materials are reshaping pollution control strategies across water, air, and soil.
The study examines the key advantages brought by their high surface area, tunable porosity, and adaptable surface chemistry, along with their role in greener and more cost-effective remediation technologies.
The review also looks at the challenges of material degradation and outlines emerging low-impact modification strategies.
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Pollution Challenges and Material Advantages
Conventional treatment methods, such as chemical precipitation, membrane filtration, and catalytic reduction, struggle in three key areas: high energy use, secondary pollution, and limited selectivity.
Carbon-based materials, however, promise a workaround with their hierarchical pore structures and multifunctional surfaces. But their full-scale implementation also faces obstacles, such as material degradation, selectivity limitations, and stability loss under real-world conditions.
This review looks at these challenges and presents several engineered carbon structure case studies as viable candidates for multi-media remediation.
The structures explored in the review show improved resilience, reduced regeneration costs, and seem to bridge the gap between lab-scale results and industrial needs.
Key Studies and Mechanisms
Carbon-based materials remove pollutants primarily through adsorption and catalytic degradation. One study showed modified activated carbon removing over 85 % of cadmium ions and achieving adsorption capacities of up to 7265 mg/g for dyes like Congo Red.
These results were driven by physical interactions (like van der Waals forces) and chemical bonding via carboxyl, hydroxyl, and phenolic groups.
Efficiency improved further when pore structures were optimized to match the sizes of pollutants. Metal doping and surface functionalization enhanced selectivity, although performance still varies in complex pollutant environments.
In air purification, carbon-based adsorbents demonstrated strong affinities for SO2, NOx, and VOCs. Toluene and benzene adsorption reached up to 479 mg/g, while surface reactions converted SO2 to H2SO4 and enabled catalytic NO? reduction via metal coordination.
Further soil remediation studies focused on biochars modified with phosphorus, metals, or magnetic compounds.
They were able to achieve cadmium adsorption of up to 150 mg/g and resulted in reduced metal bioavailability.
Cyclodextrin-functionalized biochars enhanced the uptake of hydrophobic contaminants, such as PAHs, while maintaining their structural integrity under field-mimicking conditions.
Performance Limitations and Loss Mechanisms
Despite their effectiveness, carbon-based materials face durability issues. The review categorizes losses as physical (including wear, pore collapse, and fatigue) and chemical (oxidation, acid/base corrosion, and hydrolysis).
These degrade surface activity and reduce adsorption capacity, sometimes generating CO2 or other byproducts that pose a risk of secondary pollution.
The paper emphasizes the need for strategies that extend material life and preserve functional groups under stress. For example, repeated regeneration cycles in thermal environments significantly reduce micropore volume and performance.
Modification Strategies: Physical and Chemical
Two main approaches are highlighted. Physical modification, via steam or CO2 activation, heat treatment, or microwave processing, expands and restructures pore networks without introducing chemical residues.
This improves selectivity and mechanical strength, especially under harsh industrial conditions like metallurgical gas streams.
Chemical modification introduces or adjusts surface functional groups using oxidants (e.g., HNO3, H2O2), reducing agents, or metal doping. This enhances specificity for target pollutants, supports catalytic reactions, and boosts reusability.
In one case, nickel-loaded activated carbon extended desulfurization times by over 7x compared to untreated material.
These methods also enable the development of dual-function materials that combine adsorption with energy storage, as demonstrated by a boron-nitrogen co-doped porous carbon with high specific capacitance and cycle stability.
Industry Relevance and Future Research
Modified carbon materials have clear applications in metallurgical flue gas purification, wastewater treatment, and soil stabilization, meeting both environmental and economic demands.
Their stability under corrosive, high-temperature, or multi-contaminant conditions makes them ideal for sectors facing stringent emission standards.
Future research may prioritize green and scalable modification methods, including plasma activation, biomimetic synthesis, and microwave-assisted processing, to enhance the sustainability of these materials.
Cross-disciplinary collaboration will also be essential in scaling up these innovations to industry.
Journal Reference
Meng, L. et al. (2025). Study on the Mechanism and Modification of Carbon-Based Materials for Pollutant Treatment. Materials, 18(23), 5345. DOI : 10.3390/MA18235345
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