Multifunctional fully biobased aerogels for water remediation: Applications for dye and heavy metal adsorption and oil/water separation

Amir Varamesh; Brett David Abraham; Hui Wang; Paula Berton; Heng Zhao; Keith Gourlay; Gurminder Minhas; Qingye Lu; Steven L Bryant; Jinguang Hu

doi:10.1016/j.jhazmat.2023.131824

Multifunctional fully biobased aerogels for water remediation: Applications for dye and heavy metal adsorption and oil/water separation

J Hazard Mater. 2023 Sep 5:457:131824. doi: 10.1016/j.jhazmat.2023.131824. Epub 2023 Jun 12.

Authors

Affiliations

¹ Department of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering, University of Calgary, Calgary T2N 1N4, Canada.
² Department of Biomedical Engineering, University of Calgary, Calgary T2N 1N4, Canada; Pharmaceutical Production Research Facility, University of Calgary, Calgary T2N 1N4, Canada.
³ Performance BioFilaments, 700 West Pender Street, Vancouver V6C 1G8, Canada.
⁴ Department of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering, University of Calgary, Calgary T2N 1N4, Canada. Electronic address: Steven.Bryant@ucalgary.ca.
⁵ Department of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering, University of Calgary, Calgary T2N 1N4, Canada. Electronic address: jinguang.hu@ucalgary.ca.

PMID: 37327610
DOI: 10.1016/j.jhazmat.2023.131824

Abstract

Water ecosystem contamination from industrial pollutants is an emerging threat to both humans and native species, making it a point of global concern. In this work, fully biobased aerogels (FBAs) were developed by using low-cost cellulose filament (CF), chitosan (CS), citric acid (CA), and a simple and scalable approach, for water remediation applications. The FBAs displayed superior mechanical properties (up to ∼65 kPa m³ kg^-1 specific Young's modulus and ∼111 kJ/m³ energy absorption) due to CA acting as a covalent crosslinker in addition to the natural hydrogen bonding and electrostatic interactions between CF and CS. The addition of CS and CA increased the variety of functional groups (carboxylic acid, hydroxyl and amines) on the materials' surface, resulting in super-high dye and heavy metal adsorption capacities (619 mg/g and 206 mg/g for methylene blue and copper, respectively). Further modification of FBAs with a simple approach using methyltrimethoxysilane endowed aerogel oleophilic and hydrophobic properties. The developed FBAs showed a fast performance in water and oil/organic solvents separation with more than 96% efficiency. Besides, the FBA sorbents could be regenerated and reused for multiple cycles without any significant impact on their performance. Moreover, thanks to the presence of amine groups by addition of CS, FBAs also displayed antibacterial properties by preventing the growth of Escherichia coli on their surface. This work demonstrates the preparation of FBAs from abundant, sustainable, and inexpensive natural resources for applications in wastewater purification.

Keywords: Antibacterial; Chitosan; Nanocellulose; Reusability; Wastewater.