Abstract

Since 2011, there is a growing concern of significant build-up of Sargassum fluitans and natans, observed along Carib-bean beaches, leading to negative economic and environmental impacts on these islands. Therefore, it is now critical to de-velop strategies to mitigate this problem while valorizing this invasive biomass. One approach that holds great promise deals with the development of novel adsorbents or carbons derived from this biomass, which could allow producing new value added materials for water treatment or energy storage applications. In this work, carbons materials were obtained via pyrolysis of Sargassum fluitans at temperatures between 600 and 900°C. Textural and chemical characterizations were per-formed on the alga and its activated carbons using Scanning Electron Microscopy, X-ray Photoelectron spectroscopy, ther-mogravimetric and nitrogen adsorption techniques. An organic dye, methylene blue (MB), was used as model pollutant, commonly found in wastewaters. The adsorptive removal capacities of MB by the prepared carbons were investigated. Ki-netics and isotherms were obtained and modeled to evaluate the sorption capacities and dynamic behavior of the dye. Re-sults showed that the performance of this low-cost material were very similar to those obtained from carbon materials pre-pared from more conventional precursors; thus opening growing perspectives for their application in such area. The electro-chemical characteristics of carbons were also evaluated for potential application as supercapacitors using cyclic voltamme-try, galvanostatic charge/discharge and electrochemical impedance spectroscopic methods. The capacitance values reached 95 F/g, which indicate that such material is an attractive example for the development of electrodes with promising electro-chemical properties.

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