More and more attention has been paid to environmentally friendly bio-based renewable materials as the substitution of fossil-based materials, due to the increasing environmental concerns. In this study, regenerated cellulose films with enhanced mechanical property were prepared via incorporating different plasticizers using ionic liquid 1-allyl-3-methylimidazolium chloride (AmimCl) as the solvent. The characteristics of the cellulose films were investigated by scanning electron microscopy (SEM), atomic force microscopy (AFM), thermal analysis (TG), X-ray diffraction (XRD), 13C Solid-state cross-polarization/magic angle spinning nuclear magnetic resonance (CP/MAS NMR) and tensile testing. The results showed that the cellulose films exhibited a homogeneous and smooth surface structure. It was noted that the thermal stability of the regenerated cellulose film plasticized with glycerol was increased compared with other regenerated cellulose films. Furthermore, the incorporation of plasticizers dramatically strengthened the tensile strength and improved the hydrophobicity of cellulose films, as compared to the control sample. Therefore, these notable results exhibited the potential utilization in producing environmentally friendly cellulose films with high performance properties.
Here,
we reported a facile strategy to create superhydrophobic
aerogels via freeze-drying of silylated cellulose nanofibers and silica
nanoparticles mixed suspensions. The as-prepared aerogels possessed
a hierarchical porous structure with high roughness and low surface
energy. The hierarchical rough structure and low surface energy endowed
the resultant aerogels with superhydrophobicity (water contact angle
up to 168.4°). Importantly, the composite aerogels could separate
surfactant-stabilized water-in-oil emulsions without external pressure,
with high separation efficiency (>99%) and high flux (1910 ±
60 L m–2 h–1). The aerogels were
easily recyclable and showed great antifouling performance, which
could meet the requirements for long-term use. We also assembled a
simple device to collect oil directly from water-in-oil emulsions
with the obtained aerogel and a self-priming pump. The fabrication
of the composite aerogels in our work provides a versatile way to
fabricate cellulose composite materials for water-in-oil emulsions
separation.
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