Sustainable Graphene Oxide–Intercalated Bentonite Composite for the Effective Removal of Imidacloprid From Water: Adsorption Performance, Isotherm, and Kinetics

ABSTRACT Water is a fundamental necessity for our existence, but its rapid contamination is causing devastating effects on the environment and health of living species worldwide. Adsorptive removal of pollutants is one of the popular water treatment techniques because of its simplicity, affordability, and the broad range of available adsorbents. Among the diverse range of adsorbents utilized for water applications, graphene‐based materials are gaining substantial attention in the water treatment applications owing to their unique physicochemical properties. Clay minerals are also quite popular adsorbents due to their low cost, abundant availability, and environmental compatibility. In this respect, GO‐intercalated bentonite (BNT) composite was developed via a facile solvent mixing method for the eradication of imidacloprid (IMD) pesticide from water. GO used in this study was fabricated from agricultural waste in order to increase the sustainability of the adsorption process. The synthesized adsorbent was further characterized via FTIR, BET, SEM, and TEM analysis. The experimental results showed that the addition of GO to BNT could improve the adsorptive removal of IMD in comparison to pristine BNT. The maximum removal of IMD using the fabricated composite was observed to be 92.83% under the optimized conditions (adsorbate concentration = 30 mg/L, adsorbent dose of 2 g/L, and 60‐min interaction time). The Langmuir isotherm and pseudo‐second‐order kinetic models provided a reliable description of the experimental data. Further, the resulting composite satisfactorily adsorbed IMD from real water samples, indicating the applicability of fabricated adsorbents in real wastewater as well.