Synthesis of Sulfur-Doped Magnetic Iron Oxides for Efficient Removal of Lead from Aqueous Solutions

Abstract

Heavy metal pollution poses an environmental risk, and its efficient removal and facile separation from water remains a challenge. Magnetic iron oxide, an eco-friendly, relatively stable, and easy-separation material, has been regarded as one of the most applicable adsorbents for water treatment. However, the limited adsorption capacity has restricted its applications. Herein, sulfur-doped magnetic Fe3O4 (Sx–Fe3O4) adsorbent was fabricated using a calcination method for the efficient removal of Pb(II) from water. In contrast to undoped Fe3O4, the introduction of doped sulfur greatly enhanced the adsorption performance of S–Fe3O4 over four times, with a maximum capacity of 333.33 mg g−1, which was synthesized at 300 °C with a raw molar ratio of S–Fe of 5. Based on the structure and morphology analysis, it was demonstrated that sulfur was successfully doped into the Fe3O4 structures, which resulted in Fe3O4 with active sulfur sites accordingly contributing to the adsorption enhancement through the combination of strong soft–soft interactions between soft base sulfur and soft acid Pb(II) along with surface adsorption. Sx–Fe3O4 could maintain the adsorption performance in the presence of competing ions. Furthermore, although the sulfur doping process exhibited slight side effects on the magnetic property, magnetic Sx–Fe3O4 maintained the high separation potential. This study presented a promising strategy to enhance the adsorption performance of Fe3O4 through sulfur doping for Pb(II) removal from water.