4. Conclusions
This study clearly demonstrated that waste solar panels could be
recycled to produce mesoporous silica material (S-MCM). The BET surface
area reached 1281 m2 g−1, the pore volume was 0.912 cm3g−1,
and the pore size was 3.24 nm. XRD analysis of the product exhibited
a typical pattern, clearly indicating the characteristic low angle peaks
of mesoporous silica materials. FTIR spectrometry showed absorbance
bands near 3652 and 3400 cm−1, which corresponded to the silanol
functional group on MCM-41. The results showed that the adsorption
capacity increasedwith increasing toluene concentration. The Langmuir
adsorption isotherm model was better than the Freundlich isotherm
model when describing toluene adsorption behaviors on mesoporous
silica materials. The data showed good compliance with the pseudo
first order equation and the regression coefficients for the linear plots
were higher than 0.969. These results confirmed that physisorption is
the controlling mechanism for the adsorption of toluene on mesoporous
silica materials.