Facile Fabrication of N‑Doped Magnetic Porous Carbon for Highly Efficient Mercury Removal

N-doped magnetic porous carbon (N-MPC) is an emerging adsorbent for water pollution control. However, high cost and multisteps procedure make the direct fabrication of N-MPCs difficult until now. Herein, highly dispersed N-MPCs were synthesized by a facial one-pot solid-state pyrolysis strategy. Heating the mixture of ZnO, Co­(OH)₂, and 2-methylimidazole (HmIm), Zn/Co bimetallic ZIFs formed at the initial stages, being the primary self-template to produce N-MPCs during subsequent high-temperature treatment. By altering the pyrolysis temperature and the molar ratio of ZnO/Co­(OH)₂ in the precursor, the magnetism, nitrogen content, and surface areas of N-MPCs can be easily controlled. Due to its high special surface areas and the decoration of abundant nitrogen functional groups (pyrrole-N and pyridinic-N), the optimized N-MPC-700-7/3 exhibited a superior adsorption performance for Hg²⁺ uptake (489 mg g^–1). Moreover, the N-MPCs exhibited fast dynamics in adsorption (K₂ = 0.47 g mg^–1 min^–1) and good chemical stability. The simple, sustainable, and impressive method provides an attractive way to manufacture efficiency MPC sorbents, and the prepared N-MPCs merit good application potential in environmental remediation.