Novel eco-friendly spherical porous adsorbent fabricated from Pickering middle internal phase emulsions for removal of Pb(Ⅱ) and Cd(Ⅱ)

Spherical porous materials prepared from the emulsion template used in the water treatment have displayed a vast prospect, as the high surface area, abundant porous structure, convenient operation and excellent adsorption performance. But the tedious fabrication process, high consumption of organic solvent and surfactant limited the application widely. Herein, a facile and eco-friendly spherical porous adsorbent(SPA) is fabricated from the green surfactant-free(corn oil)-in-water Pickering medium internal phase emulsions(Pickering MIPEs) via the convenient ion crosslinking procedure. The Pickering MIPEs synergistically stabilized with the semi-coke(SC), which is the natural particle produced from the shale oil distillation, and sodium alginate(SA) has excellent storage and anti-coalescence stability. The as-prepared porous adsorbent possessed the abundant pore structure, which provided favorable conditions for effective mass transfer in adsorption, and could be tuned by varying the SA dosage. The saturation adsorption capacities of Pb(II) and Cd(II) can be achieved with 460.54 and 278.77 mg/g within 45 min at 25 °C, respectively. Overall, this study supplied a viable and eco-friendly route for fabricating the spherical porous adsorbent with a tunable porous structure for heavy metal ion wastewater.