By the force of decay: A green strategy to fabricate white rot fungal degraded wood for sustainable oil/water separation

Abstract

Two species of white rot fungi, Coriolus versicolor（Cv）and Fomes fomentarius (Ff), were successfully applied to selectively degrade lignin of balsa wood, which caused weight loss of 15.66% and 9.66% respectively. Subsequently, the remained wood template was impregnated with 1 wt% cuprous oxide modified phenol formaldehyde resin and 4.8 wt% Stearic acid (STA, C17H35COOH), which was endowed with superhydrophobicity, high oil absorption capacity and filtration efficiency up to 8.97 g/g and 95% respectively. It was first time discovered that the absorption capacity of as prepared wood was not decreased but improved with the increase of the recycle times. Characterized by absorption efficiency of chloroform increased from the initial 5.69–8.97 g/g after 84 times repeat oil absorption process. While, the filtration efficiency for chloroform remains above 95% even after 84 cycles. Furthermore, the as modified balsa wood performed desirable photocatalytic degradation efficiency toward methylene blue (MB) more than 95% even after 84 cycles, this multifunctional aspect enhances the material's applicability for various environmental remediation purposes. This work proposed a novel, green and facile strategy to fabricate sustainable oil/water separation material, which has potential to be applied to oil/water separation industry.