Cellulose acetate-MoS2 amphiphilic Janus-like fibrous sponge for removing oil from wastewater

Kavitha Thangavelu, Florent Ravaux, Linda Zou

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

12 Scopus citations

Abstract

An amphiphilic Janus-like cellulose acetate-molybdenum disulfide (CA-MoS2) fibrous sponge has been designed and synthesized. It aimed to achieve efficient removal of fine oil droplets from industrial wastewater. The CA-MoS2 fibrous sponge featured an amphiphilic interfacial characteristic with oleophilic MoS2 nanospheres embedded in hydrophilic fibrous CA polymer networks. The hydrophilic CA allowed the sponge to be stable in the water, so helped the oleophilic MoS2 to reach the targeted oil droplets. Toluene was used as a model oil compound in experimental evaluations. It confirmed that the amphiphilic CA-MoS2 fibrous sponge demonstrated 99.9% of toluene removal from 1 v/v% of toluene in water emulsions with excellent regeneration and recycling ability. As high as 57.03 mg of toluene per gram of CA-MoS2 sponge was achieved within 15 min from 20 v/v/% of toluene in water emulsion. At pH of 8, CA-MoS2 sponge showed 100% of toluene removal exceeded that at the lower pH values. At 40°C, the adsorption value was 7.6% less than at lower temperature 25°C. In complementary of the experimental works, an artificial neural network (ANN) model was developed to predict toluene adsorption behavior, good agreement between experimental and predicted data was achieved with R2 = 0.999. These findings make amphiphilic Janus CA-MoS2 fibrous sponge a promising material for oil consisting industrial wastewater and municipal wastewater treatment and reuse. Developed ANN modeling approach provided an advantage for efficient adsorption predictions.

Original languageBritish English
Article number101870
JournalEnvironmental Technology and Innovation
Volume24
DOIs
StatePublished - Nov 2021

Keywords

  • Amphiphilic
  • Artificial neural network
  • Cellulose-MoS
  • Janus-like nanocomposite
  • Oil wastewater
  • Toluene removal

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