Facile wick and oil flame derived rgo Decorated with silver oxide Nanostructures for environmental Remediation and biological Applications

Abstract

Oil spills into the ocean or coastal waters can cause significant environmental damage by polluting marine ecosystems. Adsorbents made of reduced graphene oxide (rGO) foams are capable of absorbing both minor and major oil spills. However, conventional chemical synthesis of rGO frequently requires the use of petrochemical precursors, which are potentially hazardous chemicals, and requires the maintenance of special processing conditions. An alternative cost effective and environmentally friendly method for large-scale production of high-quality rGO. In this work, different vegetable oils are taken as precursors for the synthesis of rGO. The various steps of producing rGO includes, 1) Decomposition of the liquid carbon source is presented in this work, 2) diffusion, 3) segration and 4) Precipitation. The flaky graphene structures generated are characterised using x-ray diffraction (XRD), Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), Raman, scanning electron microscopy (SEM), atomic force microscopy (AFM), energy dispersive X-ray analysis (EDX), and contact angle measurements. The kinetics and isotherm studies indicate that rGO adsorption occurs via a monolayer physisorption process in the case of used sunflower oil (USO) and a monolayer physisorption process in the case of engine oil (EO), involving Van Der Waals forces, electrostatic, stacking, and hydrophobic interactions, as well as cation stacking and radical scavenging activities. The best fit for first order kinetics is obtained for USO (R2=0.9919), while the best fit for second order kinetics is obtained for EO (R2=0.9823). According to the intra-particle diffusion model, R2 values for USO and EO are 0.9788 and 0.9851, respectively, indicating that both USO and EO exhibit intra-particle diffusion mechanisms. This study establishes that rGO produced can be used for environmental remediation newline