Natural polysaccharide-based aerogels and their applications in oil–water separations: a review

Abstract

With the development of the economy and the progress of industrialization, the problem of water pollution has become more and more serious. Crude oil leakage at sea, petroleum industry wastewater,...

Advances in special wettable materials for adsorption separation of high-viscosity crude oil/water mixtures

“…Historically, people have devoted to exploring various materials for adsorption separation of oils and other contaminants from water, such as organic synthetic porous polymers (nonwoven polypropylene, polyurethane foams, and rubbers), inorganic minerals (zeolites, silica aerogels, expanded vermiculites, clay, exfoliated graphite, and activated carbon), and natural materials (milkweed, floss, cotton, kapok, wool, and kenaf). [50][51][52][53][54] Negatively, due to the poor porous structure of these materials, they usually exhibit very low adsorption capacity. Meanwhile, these adsorption materials can absorb both oil and water without differences, resulting in the lack of selectivity of such adsorption separation materials in the practical oil/water mixture separation process, which will further reduce the separation performance.…”

Elastic white radish-based cellulose aerogel for efficient oil-water separation

“…Therefore, the development of highperformance selective adsorption materials to achieve rapid and e cient separation of oil-water mixture is of great signi cance. Aerogel is a porous and ultra-light material, showing a great application prospect in water pollution treatment and oil-water separation [5][6][7] . Compared with non-biomass porous materials such as silica aerogel [8] , carbon nanotube aerogel [9] , melamine sponge [10][11][12] and polyurethane sponge [11][12][13] , cellulose aerogels have the advantages of easy modi cation, renewability and abundant sources, and so they have attracted much attention [14][15][16][17] .…”

Recent advances in superwetting materials for separation of oil/water mixtures

“…With the rapid development of industry and the economy, oily wastewater discharge and offshore oil spill accidents occur frequently, which seriously affect the normal lives of humans and the ecological environment. [1][2][3][4] For example, the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010 released tons of precious oil into rivers and near-shore water, causing damage to the ecosystem and residents. 5 Conventional approaches for oily wastewater treatment can be divided into physical, chemical and biochemical categories, [6][7][8][9] including the gravity method, suspension method, filtration method, precipitation method, centrifugal method, in situ combustion, anaerobic treatment technology and so on.…”