Tailored design of food waste hydrochar for efficient adsorption and catalytic degradation of refractory organic contaminant

Custom-designed carbonaceous adsorbent/catalyst from ‘green’ sources with desired functionalities under science-informed conditions is indispensable to promote the sustainable industrial wastewater treatment. In this study, we prepared hydrochar by hydrothermal carbonization (HTC) of three types of pre-consumer food waste (i.e., lettuce, taro, and watermelon peel) with different components at various temperatures (i.e., 180–240 °C). The...