Adsorptive removal and kinetics of methylene blue from aqueous solution using NiO/MCM-41 composite

Highly ordered mesoporous material MCM-41 was synthesized from tetraethylorthosilicate (TEOS) as Si source and cetyltrimethylammonium bromide (CTAB) as template. Well-dispersed NiO nanoparticles were introduced into the highly ordered mesoporous MCM-41 by chemical precipitation method to prepare the highly ordered mesoporous NiO/MCM-41 composite. X-ray diffraction (XRD) analysis, transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and high-resolution TEM (HRTEM), and nitrogen adsorption–desorption measurement were used to examine the morphology and the microstructure of the obtained composite. The morphological study clearly revealed that the synthesized NiO/MCM-41 composite has a highly ordered mesoporous structure with a specific surface area of 435.9 m² g⁻¹. A possible formation mechanism is preliminary proposed for the formation of the nanostructure. The adsorption performance of NiO/MCM-41 composite as an adsorbent was further demonstrated in the removal azo dyes of methyl orange (MO), Congo red (CR), methylene blue (MB) and rhodaming B (RB) under visible light irradiation and dark, respectively. The kinetics and mechanism of removal methylene blue were studied. The results show that NiO/MCM-41 composite has a good removal capacity for organic pollutant MB from the wastewater under the room temperature. Compared with MCM-41 and NiO nanoparticles, 54.2% and 100% higher removal rate were obtained by the NiO/MCM-41 composite.