Baking-inspired pore regulation strategy towards a hierarchically porous carbon for ultra-high efficiency cationic/anionic dyes adsorption

Inspired by the baking process, hierarchically porous activated carbon with high mass transfer and pollutant affinity was constructed by waste soybean meal via three steps of pre-cured, carbonization, and alkali activation. [Display omitted] •Waste SM was used to synthesis activated carbon by imitating the baking process.•SAC shows hierarchically pore structure including micro-, meso-, and macro-pores.•SAC has ultra-high SSA (3536.95 m2/g) and pore volume (2.29 m3/g).•SAC exhibits high uptake for MB (3016 mg/g), MO (6486 mg/g), and mixed dye (8475 mg/g).•SAC displays excellent dynamic adsorption and regeneration performance. Converting waste resource into porous carbon toward contaminant capturing is a crucial strategy for realizing “treating waste with waste”. Inspired by bread baking process, the soybean meal activated carbon (SAC) with multimodal pore structures was developed via thermally remodeling the pores of waste soybean meal. The obtained SAC-3-800 has ultra-high specific surface area (3536.952 m2/g), as well as a hierarchically porous structure. SAC-3-800 exhibits extremely high adsorption capacity for methylene blue (MB) (3015.59 mg/g), methyl orange (MO) (6486.30 mg/g), and mixed dyes (8475.09 mg/g). The hierarchically porous structure enabled fast adsorption kinetics of SAC-3-800 for MB and MO (∼30 min). Additionally, SAC-3-800 shows excellent dynamic adsorption and regeneration performance, exhibiting great potential for industrial applications. This work showcases a feasible method for synthesizing hierarchically porous carbon with outstanding adsorption performance that can simultaneously achieve efficient treatment of dye-wastewater and value-added utilization of waste resources.