Carbon fiber aerogel made from raw cotton: a novel, efficient and recyclable sorbent for oils and organic solvents

Hengchang Bi; Zongyou Yin; Xiehong Cao; Xiao Xie; Chaoliang Tan; Xiao Huang; Bo Chen; Fangtao Chen; Qingling Yang; Xinyang Bu; Xuehong Lu; Litao Sun; Hua Zhang

doi:10.1002/adma.201302435

Carbon fiber aerogel made from raw cotton: a novel, efficient and recyclable sorbent for oils and organic solvents

Adv Mater. 2013 Nov 6;25(41):5916-21. doi: 10.1002/adma.201302435. Epub 2013 Aug 19.

Authors

Hengchang Bi¹, Zongyou Yin, Xiehong Cao, Xiao Xie, Chaoliang Tan, Xiao Huang, Bo Chen, Fangtao Chen, Qingling Yang, Xinyang Bu, Xuehong Lu, Litao Sun, Hua Zhang

Affiliation

¹ SEU-FEI Nano-Pico Center, Key Laboratory of MEMS of Ministry of Education, Southeast University, Nanjing, 210096, P. R. China; School of Materials Science and Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, 639798, 50 Nanyang Avenue, Singapore.

PMID: 24038404
DOI: 10.1002/adma.201302435

Abstract

Twisted carbon fiber (TCF) aerogel with good selective sorption is produced in large scale by using raw cotton as the precursor. TCF aerogel shows highly efficient sorption of organic liquids (pump oil: up to 192 times its own weight; chloroform: up to 115 times its own weight). Moreover, it could be regenerated many times without decrease of sorption capacity by distillation, combustion or squeezing, which depends on the type of pollutants.

Keywords: aerogel; carbon fiber; organic solvent; pollutant; raw cotton; sorbent.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't