Fabrication of porous adsorbents from eco-friendly aqueous foam for high-efficient removal of cationic dyes and sustainable utilization assessment

Porous materials applied in environmental remediation have received researchers' exten-sive attention recently, but the related green and convenient preparation method is rarely re-ported. Here, we recommended a green and convenient strategy for the fabrication of porous material via aqueous foam templates, which was synergistically stabilized by Codonopsis pi-losula (CP) and clay minerals of attapulgite (APT). The characterization results revealed that the APT was modified by organic molecules leached from CP and anchored at the air-water interface, which improved the foam stability significantly. The novel porous material of poly-acrylamide/Codonopsis pilosula/attapulgite (PAM/CP/APT) templated from the aqueous foam via a polymerization reaction had excellent adsorption capacity for the cationic dyes methyl violet (MV) and methylene blue (MB), and the adsorption capacity can reach 755.85 mg/g and 557.64 mg/g, respectively. More importantly, the adsorption capacity of spent adsorbent ma-terial was still over 200 mg/g after being recycled five times through a simple carbonization process, and then it was added to the plant pot, the total biomass was increased by about 86.42%. This study provided a green and sustainable pathway for the preparation, applica-tion and subsequent processing of porous materials.(c) 2023 The Research Center for Eco-Environmental Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences. Published by Elsevier B.V.