Crosslinked 3D porous composite foams as adsorbents for efficient organic dye removal
Thi Sinh Vo, Muhammad Mohsin Hossain, Jinwoo Lee, Jonghwan Suhr, Kyunghoon Kim
Abstract
This study has successfully explored the incorporation of chitosan (CTS) and green filler materials [bamboo powders (BP)–natural material and coffee grounds (CG, reuse of spent CG)–waste material], using as low-cost adsorbents. Notably, the cost of these filler materials was almost zero, which were only washed with distilled-water and air-dried, and then, they were well coupled with a gelatin/CTS (GEL/CTS) mixture and an assist of glutaraldehyde–crosslinker via a simple freeze-dry method, using as novel 3D porous composite foams (GEL/CTS/BP and GEL/CTS/CG foams). More importantly, a comparison among the composite foams contained two different low-cost filler materials was conducted to clarify in detail their interactions and performance with the GEL/CTS matrix, in which this investigation might be the first until now. As a result, the compressive properties of the composite foams greatly depended on the addition of filler materials, in which the 1.0 wt./v-% of fillers in the composite foam possessed the best compressive performance compared with other loadings of fillers. These composite foams were excellent adsorbents for removing various organic dyes from water; besides, they also exhibited better recyclability than the other relevant adsorbents, regarding the consecutive adsorption/desorption cycles. Thereby, the composite foams prepared in this study can become encouraged candidates for applications of wastewater treatment, owing to the high performance, reusability/durability, eco-friendly properties, simple and low-cost fabrication processes.