Ultralight and porous cellulose nanofibers/polyethyleneimine composite aerogels with exceptional performance for selective anionic dye adsorption

Weihua Zhang, Luyao Wang, Ermei Mäkilä, Stefan Willför, Chunlin Xu*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleScientificpeer-review

33 Citations (Scopus)
29 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

It is significant to develop new adsorbents with excellent adsorption performance and convenient operation ability for removing pollutants from wastewater owing to the growing environmental problems. In this paper, a novel ultralight aerogel-based adsorbent with highly porous structure and good mechanical integrity was fabricated based on the interaction of amine groups on polyethyleneimine (PEI) and hydroxyl groups on cellulose nanofibers (CNF), with epichlorohydrin (ECH) serving as a crosslinker. The obtained CNF/PEI aerogel showed excellent water stability in harsh conditions, fast water-activated shape recovery, and ultra-fast water transport. The adsorption capacity for methyl orange (MO) in batch can reach to1226 mg g−1 at pH 6. Furthermore, the membrane also exhibited excellent selective adsorption and filtration, and separation performance. Therefore, this paper presents a new strategy to prepare low-cost and highly efficient adsorbents to remove organic dyes from wastewater for potential practical applications.

Original languageEnglish
Article number114513
JournalIndustrial Crops and Products
Volume177
Early online date10 Jan 2022
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Mar 2022
MoE publication typeA1 Journal article-refereed

Keywords

  • Aerogel
  • Cellulose nanofibers
  • Filtration
  • Polyethyleneimine
  • Selective adsorption
  • Water treatment

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