ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Environ. Sci.
Sec. Water and Wastewater Management
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fenvs.2025.1674858
This article is part of the Research TopicAdvanced Oxidation and Adsorption Technologies to Tackle Water PollutionView all articles
Green synthesis of carbon nanospheres from Vachellia nilotica for pendimethalin removal
Provisionally accepted
Krupal Vidhyarthi1
Gautam Priyadarshi2
Bhakti Patel2Santosh Kumar Sahu2
Esha Rami1*
Dipak Kumar Sahoo3*
Ashish Patel2*- 1Parul University, Vadodara, India
- 2Hemchandracharya North Gujarat University, Patan, India
- 3Iowa State University of Science and Technology, Ames, United States
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Pendimethalin (PND), a persistent dinitroaniline herbicides, poses significant ecological and human health risk due to its high stability, bioaccumulation and toxicity. The present study explores microwave-assisted rapid synthesis of carbon nanospheres (CNSs) from Vachellia nilotica biochar for removal of PND from aqueous medium. The synthesised CNSs were detailed characterized using FTIR, XRD, SEM-EDS, BET and pHZPC to conforming oxygen reach functional groups, crystalline graphitic domains, spherical morphology, elemental compositions and surface area and surface charge. Batch adsorption study was conducted to evaluate the effect of initial concentration (30-70 mg L-1), contact time (0-150 min), dose (2.5-20 mg), solution pH (2-12) at room temperature. The maximum removal efficiency (95.8%) and adsorption capacity (76.95 mg g-1) were achieved at 50 mg L-1 PND, 10 pH and 50 mg dose of CNSs. Adsorption kinetics followed a pseudo-second-order model in linear fitting while non-linear modelling indicated dominance of physisorption with intraparticle diffusion, indicating hybrid mechanism. Isotherm studies showed the Langmuir and Freundlich model best describe the adsorption process, confirming monolayer-multilayer adsorption. Furthermore, the presence of multivalent salts enhanced removal efficiency through strong ionic bridging interaction and higher regeneration capacity up to 5 cycles, demonstrating potential towards real-water applicability. Compared to the conventional adsorbent, CNSs exhibited superior performance with rapid synthesis (3 min) and higher capacity. These findings establish biochar-derived CNSs as a cost effective, eco-friendly, and efficient adsorbent for pesticide remediation in contaminated waters.
Keywords: Adsorption, biochar, Carbon nanosphere, Microwave-assisted synthesis, Kinetics
Received: 28 Jul 2025; Accepted: 20 Oct 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Vidhyarthi, Priyadarshi, Patel, Sahu, Rami, Sahoo and Patel. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Esha Rami, esha.rami82036@paruluniversity.ac.in
Dipak Kumar Sahoo, dsahoo@iastate.edu
Ashish Patel, uni.ashish@gmail.com
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