Bio-Based Porous Aerogel with Bionic Structure and Hydrophobic Polymer Coating for Efficient Absorption of Oil/Organic Liquids

Abstract

Increasing contamination risk from oil/organic liquid leakage creates strong demand for the development of absorbents with excellent hydrophobicity and absorption capacity. Herein, bagasse was carbonized to form porous char with a special structure of array-style and vertically perforated channels, and then the activation process enlarged the pore volume of the char. With the cooperation of low-surface-energy polydimethylsiloxane and diatomaceous earth particles, the modified activated carbon aerogel (MACA) was fabricated by modifying the surface coating and mastoid structure on the bagasse char. Moreover, the MACA demonstrates high porosity oil-water separation, hydrophobicity, and considerable absorption capacity (4.06–12.31 g/g) for gasoline and various organic solvents. This work converts agricultural waste into an efficient porous adsorbent, offering a scalable and commercially feasible solution to solving the leakages of oil/organic solvents.

Bionic Aerogel with a Lotus Leaf-like Structure for Efficient Oil-Water Separation and Electromagnetic Interference Shielding

“…Figure 3 a shows the adsorption capacity of CACA-2 for various kinds of organic solvents (e.g., xylene, toluene, n-hexane, THF, DMF, and chloroform) and oils (e.g., pump oil, silicone oil, and olive oil), which are the common pollutants in water resources, with values in the range of 12 to 22 g·g −1 depending on the density and viscosity of the pollutants. Compared to previously reported porous foams or aerogels ( Table 1 ) [ 10 , 11 , 37 , 38 , 39 ], CACA exhibits similar adsorption capacity and better hydrophobicity, but it is prepared by a simpler method. The durability of the adsorbent and the collectability of the pollutants are also essential indicators for adsorbent material.…”

“…However, due to limited hydrophobicity and adsorption properties, aerogels usually suffer from complex chemical modifications to achieve the desired application. Grafting chemical groups such as siloxanes and fluorosilanes on the surface of aerogels is the main way of chemical modification [ 9 , 10 , 11 ], which not only involves time-consuming processes (chemical vapor deposition, impregnation, etc.) but also results in hydrophobicity with poor stability in strong corrosive environments [ 12 ].…”

Flexible PDMS-Based SERS Substrates Replicated from Beetle Wings for Water Pollutant Detection

“…Moreover, bionic materials, such as butterfly wings, cicada wings, mantis wings, lotus leaves, and rose petals, have been widely considered to be excellent SERS substrates because of their 3D periodic microstructures. Moreover, there are studies with SERS substrates synthesized using a simple, low-cost, and environment-friendly method, wherein the component chitosan/chitin was utilized as an in situ reducer to synthesize gold nanoparticles in natural 3D photonic architectures [ 20 , 21 , 22 ]. The results show that a SERS substrate could detect 10 −9 M of 4-ATP and exhibited the lowest relative standard deviation (RSD) with a moderate SNR [ 23 ].…”