Water contamination caused by hazardous organic dyes has drawn considerable attention

among all of the techniques released

adsorption has been widely used

which however to a large degree is dependent on the development of high efficiency adsorbents. Waste biomass based porous carbon is becoming the new star class of adsorbents

and thus contribute more to the sustainable development of the society. In this work

for the first time to the best of our knowledge

abundant waste fallen

Platanus orientalis

leaves are employed as the raw material for hierarchical activated porous carbon (APC) microspheres

via

a mild hydrothermal carbonization (210℃

12.0 h) followed by one-step calcination (750℃

1.0 h). The APC microspheres exhibit a specific surface area of 1355.53 m

2

·g

-1

and abundant functional groups such as O—H and C=O. Furthermore

the APC microspheres are used as the adsorbents for removal of RhB and MO

with the maximum adsorption capabilities of 557.06 mg·g

-1

and 327.49 mg·g

-1

respectively

higher than those of the most porous carbon originated from biomass. The adsor

ption rates rapidly approach to 98.2% (RhB) and 95.4% (MO) within 10 min. The adsorption data can be well fitted by Langmuir isotherm model and the pseudo-second-order kinetic model

meanwhile the intra-particle diffusion and Boyd models simultaneously indicate that the diffusion within the pores is the main rate-limiting step. Besides

the APC microspheres also demonstrate good recyclability

and may also be applied to other areas such as heterogeneous catalysis and energy storage.