Investigation On The Sorption Behavior Of Nicotine Onto Graphene Oxide And Their Co-toxicity

Graphene, as one of the most popular nanoparticles, and a new kind of carbon materials, has not only a larger specific surface area, but also a lot of pore and folded cavity, which makes it a great potential application as the adsorbent materials. Graphene oxide contents a lot of carboxyl and hydroxyl in the surface, and so as to improve water solubility and adsorption property of graphene. Up to now, although there are many researches about the sorption of organic matter onto graphene oxide, rare researches about the biological effects of graphene oxide in the presence of organic matter are reported. In this paper, the graphene oxide was synthesized through Hummers method, and then characterized by TEM, Raman spectrum and XRD respectively. The results indicated that even the layers in graphene became3-5layers; the structure of graphene was not changed after being oxidated. Then, the adsorption behavior of nicotine onto graphene oxide is studied. The influence factors such as the shocking time, solid-to-liquid ratio, pH, ionic strength on the adsorption of nicotine onto graphene oxide are investigated. Finally, the co-toxicity of graphene oxide and nicotine to mice is also investigated.The results of the experiment are as followings:1) The sorption of nicotine on graphene oxide can reach the adsorption equilibrium quickly with a larger adsorption capacity, which indicating that the adsorbent as a kind of efficient adsorbent, can also be effectively use to deal with waste water2) The changes of solid-to-liquid ratio are almost no influences on the sorption percentage of organic matter nicotine under the experiment ranges.3) With the changes of pH in solution, the nicotine has different species status because of protonation and deprotonation, which affects seriously the adsorption of nicotine on the graphene oxide.4) The ionic strength has not obvious effects on the adsorption of nicotine on graphene oxide.5) Fitting the experimental data by Langmuir isotherm model and Freundlich isotherm model, it can be seen that the Langmuir isotherm model simulate the data very well.6) After exposure graphene oxide and nicotine to mice either single or joint, through measuring the levels of reactive oxygen species (ROS) in serum and lung tissues, and comparing the ROS content in serum and lung tissues of single exposure groups with that of co-exposure groups, it was found that graphene oxide has more serious effect on lung injury in mice in the presence of nicotine.