Highly Efficient Remediation of Chloridazon and Its Metabolites: The Case of Graphene Oxide Nanoplatelets

The contamination of aqueous environments by aromatic pollutants has become a global issue. Chloridazon, a herbicide considered as harmless to the ecosystem, has been widely used in recent decades and has accumulated, together with its degradation products desphenyl-chloridazon and methyl-desphenyl-chloridazon, to a non-negligible level in surface water and groundwater. To respond to the consequent necessity for remediation, in this work, we study the adsorption of chloridazon and its metabolites by graphene oxide and elucidate the underlying mechanism by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy. We find a high adsorption capacity of 67 g kg-1for chloridazon and establish that bonding of chloridazon to graphene oxide is mainly due to hydrophobic interaction and hydrogen bonding. These findings demonstrate the potential of graphene-based materials for the remediation of chloridazon and its metabolites from aqueous environments.