Tailored hydrophobic/hydrophilic lignin coatings on mesoporous silica for sustainable cobalt(II) recycling

Abstract

Lignin is a renewable biopolymer, and its chemical functionalization renders it a prospective material for a plethora of applications. Within this respect, we present a method for lignin immobilization on the surface of mesoporous silica. Two types of lignins were used to prove the feasibility of the fabrication of either hydrophilic or hydrophobic biocoatings on silica. The procedure permits to immobilize 17 mg of lignosulfonate (LS) or 37 mg of kraft lignin (KL) per gram of silica. The bioinorganic composites display a synergistic effect in the adsorption of cobalt(II) ions from aqueous solutions because the adsorption efficiency outperforms the individual constituents. These results demonstrate that thin lignin overlayers, exhibiting polymer concentrations of 0.07 mg·m-2 for LS-SiO2, and 0.14 mg·m-2 for KL-SiO2, provide new functionality in comparison to bulk lignin and metal oxides. According to the Langmuir isotherm model, the adsorption capacity toward aqua complexes of Co(II) was found to be 75 and 59 mg·g-1 for the LS- or KL-coated silica, respectively. The kinetic study revealed that lignin-SiO2 composites gained the features of inorganic sorbents because 1-1.5 h was sufficient for effective cobalt extraction. The adsorption on the bioinorganic composites proceeds with the pseudo-second-order kinetics model. The adsorption of Co(II) ions was confirmed by means of solid-state 1H magic-angle spinning (MAS) NMR spectroscopy. The simplicity of the synthesis, low-cost and abundancy of substrates, high capacity, and fast kinetics make such lignin-coated silica a promising material for cobalt recovery.