Green synthesis of reduced graphene oxide using bagasse and its application in dye removal: A waste-to-resource supply chain

Abstract Graphene is usually synthesized through deoxygenation of graphene oxide (GO) by hydrazine which functions as a reducing agent, but the production of graphene via this method suffers a high cost and is often regarded to be not environmental-friendly. In this work, we developed a simple and efficient method for the green reduction of GO to reduced graphene oxide (rGO) dispersed on sugarcane bagasse derived from rGO/bagasse material. The rGO/bagasse was characterized by Scanning electron microscopy, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, Raman spectroscopy, Thermogravimetric analysis, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy and X-ray diffraction analysis. All these characterization techniques clearly revealed that the rGO has been successfully prepared by reduction sugars. In addition, rGO synthesized from bagasse was considered as a promising adsorbent for removing methyl blue. Adsorption kinetics were also applied to stimulate the adsorption process, and the adsorption behavior of this new adsorbent fits well with the pseudo-second-order kinetic model (R 2  = 0.98). Finally, the cycling experiments for MB adsorption by bagasse synthesized rGO confirmed that the as-prepared rGO was reusable. Taken together, all results in this work provided the new insights into the green reduction of GO by bagasse, and the formation of rGO/bagasse material presented a great potential in the disposal of dye waste water.