1. Introduction
Synthetic dyes are a wide class of compounds, whose production is rapidly expanding (up to 10
5 tons per year) due to their utilization in textile, leather, paper, printing, cosmetic, and pharmaceutical industries [
1,
2,
3]. The largest contribution to this consumption rate comes from textiles industry, that accounts for about 75% of the employment of global dyestuff [
4]. However, up to date, there is no strict regulation on dye content in industrial effluents, leading to uncontrolled release in water bodies. Indeed, synthetic dyes are reported to be harmful for the environment and the human health. Environmental concerns grow from dye recalcitrancy in water bodies, which modifies color, transparency and pH: plant growth is inhibited, photosynthesis is compromised, and the whole ecosystem is dysregulated [
5,
6,
7,
8]. On the other hand, synthetic dyes pose a threat also on human health: they are reported to exert inflammatory, genotoxic, mutagenic and carcinogenic effects on liver, kidney, skin, etc. [
1,
9,
10]. Therefore, it is very relevant to recognize a way to remediate color-bearing effluents. In this work, methyl orange (MO) has been considered as model anionic dye.
There are several techniques that can be applied to remove dyes from industrial sewages, like: biological processes [
11,
12,
13]; chemical techniques, like Advanced Oxidation Processes (AOP), among which stand out Fenton [
14,
15] and photo-Fenton [
16,
17,
18] processes, and photocatalysis [
19,
20,
21]; physical processes, the most widespread of which are adsorption [
22,
23,
24,
25,
26,
27], coagulation, flocculation, and membrane separation [
28,
29,
30]. Although appealing, most of the biological and chemical processes suffer from low productivity, slow kinetics, poor scalability, and tendency to generate reaction intermediates that are potentially more dangerous than dyes themselves [
3]. On an industrial scale, physical methods draw the most attention due to their simplicity and cost-effectiveness. Adsorption is the most frequently employed unit operation in the field, since it does not lead to the generation of toxic intermediates, and the solute can be easily recovered from the sorbent by simply coupling the system with a desorption step. Working in such a way, dyes can be recovered in a controlled manner. In general, adsorption outcomes rely on the combination adsorbent-adsorbate: namely, the adsorbent should be chosen with respect to the specific molecule to be removed from the contaminated solution. Moreover, since adsorption takes place at the solid-fluid interface, highly porous solids are to be preferred [
28], since they offer large specific surface areas. Aerogels represent promising adsorbents, for the following reasons: they possess specific surface areas up to 1000 m
2/g, that means large availability of active sites; being filled mostly with air, porosity values range from 60 to 99.9%; they are low-density materials (10
-1-10
-2 g/cm
3) [
31,
32,
33]. Starting from a hydrogel, aerogels can be produced using supercritical CO
2 (SC-CO
2) gel drying: employing the fluid-dynamical properties of supercritical fluids, like zero surface tension and high diffusivities [
34,
35,
36]. No tension is exerted on the gel nanostructured network, preserving completely the original structure and, consequently, the adsorption potential of the material.
Different materials can be selected for adsorption purposes, like metal organic frameworks (MOFs), active carbons, biopolymers, etc. [
37]. Biopolymers like chitosan, alginate, cellulose, etc., are particularly interesting from an industrial point of view as adsorbent materials, due to their low cost, availability and eco-friendliness [
38]. Among the wide range of biopolymers, chitosan (CH), obtained by deacetylating chitin from seafood, gained recognition in wastewater treatment for numerous reasons. Firstly, it is environmentally friendly, biodegradable, biocompatible and non-toxic. From a chemical point of view, it is rich in amin and hydroxyl groups: this feature allows chitosan to bind with anionic and cationic dyes; moreover, it can be easily functionalized with specific additives to enhance sorption capacity, pH-sensitivity, and mechanical resistance [
39,
40,
41]. One of the most common additives, added to chitosan-based adsorbents, is graphene oxide (GO), produced by the oxidation and functionalization of graphite sheets. GO is an interesting choice for adsorption, since during activation multiple functional groups are introduced, such as carbonyl, epoxy, carboxyl and hydroxyl; GO, therefore, can interact with different dyes, among which also methyl orange [
42,
43,
44].
Several attempts are reported in the scientific literature, to remove MO using CH-GO porous structures. Zhu et al. [
45] prepared chitosan-graphene oxide composites by freeze-drying, and proved that the structures that showed the largest specific surface area resulted in improved adsorption performances: MO was removed up to 95.3% from the starting solution. However, the GO/CH mass ratio that reached the largest adsorption efficiency was 10:1. Indeed, GO preparation requires time-consuming procedures and significant amounts of toxic solvents: the goal could be to obtain the same efficiencies using significantly lower amounts of filler. For this system, the saturation capacity was about 38.67 mg/g. Moreover, kinetic analysis highlighted that chemisorption takes place between MO and the composite. Shi et al. [
46] also carried out a study on the effect of GO on MO adsorption. They stated that a GO excess in the adsorbent can be detrimental to MO removal; once formulation was optimized, saturation capacity increased up to 543.4 mg/g. pH influences adsorption too: acidic pH results in highest MO removals, due to the accumulation of positive charges on the adsorbent surfaces. Other chitosan-based porous structures were employed for MO removal, incorporating MOFs and GO in the chitosan framework [
47]. Indeed, in this case, it was confirmed that smaller amounts of filler result in improved dye adsorption, provided that a balance between chemical and physical adsorption is ensured: respectively, they are associated with surface functional groups and pore size distribution. Using optimized adsorbent formulation, the maximum adsorption capacity was about 412 mg/g.
To the best of our knowledge, it is not reported any attempt to use nanostructured chitosan-based aerogels produced using SC-CO2 gel drying for MO adsorption. Therefore, the aim of this work is to produce chitosan aerogels via supercritical drying, eventually loaded with GO, and to assess their utilization towards MO removal. Morphological analysis on the produced aerogels was carried out; the effect of driving force and adsorbent dosage were studied. Isotherm and kinetic analysis are also proposed, to understand how adsorption takes place onto nanostructured devices.
4. Conclusions
Chitosan/graphene oxide nanostructured adsorbents, produced by supercritical drying at 200 bar and 35 °C, were proved to be effective adsorbents for MO dye. Indeed, the nanostructure was better employed at larger driving forces, meaning that there exists a kinetic limitation that weighs on MO removal. Moreover, removal efficiency of 85% was achieved by using a CH-GO dosage of 8 g/L, that represents a promising result for further studies. Kinetic analyses proved that MO adsorption on CH-GO composite is a complex multi-step process, that involves different mass transfer phenomena that in view of an industrial scale-up, should be accelerated.
Overall, although the first results obtained in the present work are promising, future studies will be dedicated to make the system more efficient towards MO removal, by testing the effect of pH on adsorption efficiency, and to further investigate the phenomenology that stands behind adsorption using nanostructured biopolymeric sorbents.