Preparation and adsorption performance of cellulose nanofibrils/polyvinyl alcohol composite gel spheres with millimeter size

Qing Yi; Sheng Lu; Yutong Fan; Dehua Cheng; Xumei Wang; Shaoling Cheng; Hongxiang Xie

doi:10.1016/j.carbpol.2021.118850

Preparation and adsorption performance of cellulose nanofibrils/polyvinyl alcohol composite gel spheres with millimeter size

Carbohydr Polym. 2022 Feb 1:277:118850. doi: 10.1016/j.carbpol.2021.118850. Epub 2021 Nov 3.

Authors

Qing Yi¹, Sheng Lu², Yutong Fan¹, Dehua Cheng¹, Xumei Wang¹, Shaoling Cheng³, Hongxiang Xie⁴

Affiliations

¹ Department of Chemistry, School of Science, Tianjin University of Science and Technology, Tianjin 300457, China.
² College of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science, Tianjin University of Science and Technology, Tianjin 300457, China.
³ Department of Chemistry, School of Science, Tianjin University of Science and Technology, Tianjin 300457, China. Electronic address: yhcsl@tust.edu.cn.
⁴ Department of Chemistry, School of Science, Tianjin University of Science and Technology, Tianjin 300457, China. Electronic address: xiehx@tust.edu.cn.

PMID: 34893260
DOI: 10.1016/j.carbpol.2021.118850

Abstract

Wastewater treatment is a huge problem facing human beings. The development of recyclable and efficient adsorption materials is of great benefit to solve the problem. Based on the biodegradable cellulose nanofibers (CNFs) derived from biomass resources, the large sized CNFs/PVA composite hydrogel spheres (CV-HSs, 1-3 mm) were successfully prepared by the inverse suspension pellet-forming technology using the polymers as raw materials, and another hydrophobic CNFs/PVA composite aerogel spheres (HCV-ASs) were also obtained by lyophilization and followed silylation of as-prepared CV-HSs. The CV-HSs showed excellent adsorption properties for simulated pollutants, including Cu²⁺, phenol and aniline in water. The maximum absorption capacity of CV-HSs was 17.22 mmol/g for Cu²⁺, 176.72 mg/g for phenol and 341.93 mg/g for aniline respectively. The HCV-ASs exhibited good absorption properties for weak polar organic solvents, such as petroleum ether, ethyl acetate and toluene. In summary, two kinds of large-sized CNFs/PVA composite gel spheres were successfully fabricated, and exhibited good adsorption properties for organic pollutants and heavy metal ions, indicating their potential for wastewater treatment.

Keywords: Adsorption; Aerogel spheres; Cellulose nanofibrils (CNFs); Hydrogel spheres; Polyvinyl alcohol (PVA).