Abstract
Hereby we report a novel cellulose nanofirbril aerogel-based W/O/W microreactor system that can be used for fast and high efficient molecule or ions extraction and separation. The ultra-light cellulose nanofibril based aerogel microspheres with high porous structure and water storage capacity were prepared. The aerogel microspheres that were saturated with stripping solution were dispersed in an oil phase to form a stable water-in-oil (W/O) suspension. This suspension was then dispersed in large amount of external waste water to form W/O/W microreactor system. Similar to a conventional emulsion liquid membrane (ELM), the molecules or ions in external water can quickly transport to the internal water phase. However, the microreactor is also significantly different from traditional ELM: the water saturated nanocellulose cellulose aerogel microspheres can be easily removed by filtration or centrifugation after extraction reaction. The condensed materials in the filtrated aerogel particles can be squeezed and washed out and aerogel microspheres can be reused. This novel process overcomes the key barrier step of demulsification in traditional ELM process. Our experimental indicates the novel microreactor was able to extract 93% phenol and 82% Cu2+ from external water phase in a few minutes, suggesting its great potential for industrial applications.
Highlights
Droplets with a very narrow size distribution
In order to solve instability problem and de-emulsification of Emulsion liquid membrane (ELM), we report in this study using cellulose nanofibril based-aerogel micropsheres as the microcollector
Li et al suggested that, for ELM system, the optimized emulsion droplets should have a size between 0.3–10 um with good stability[15]; (b) the highly porous and super-water-absorbent TOCN aerogel microspheres can accommodate large amount of internal phase and allow the proper extraction; (c) the most important that crosslinked aerogel microspheres can be separated and regenerated after extracting step, which overcomes the key barrier in the ELM separation
Summary
Hereby we report a novel cellulose nanofirbril aerogel-based W/O/W microreactor system that can be used for fast and high efficient molecule or ions extraction and separation. The condensed materials in the filtrated aerogel particles can be squeezed and washed out and aerogel microspheres can be reused This novel process overcomes the key barrier step of demulsification in traditional ELM process. Li et al suggested that, for ELM system, the optimized emulsion droplets should have a size between 0.3–10 um with good stability[15]; (b) the highly porous and super-water-absorbent TOCN aerogel microspheres can accommodate large amount of internal phase and allow the proper extraction; (c) the most important that crosslinked aerogel microspheres can be separated and regenerated after extracting step, which overcomes the key barrier in the ELM separation. The regenerated microreactor system exhibits excellent reuse ability All these demonstrated that cellulose nanofibril aerogel microsphere based membrane could be served as a new extraction tool and has great potential for industrial applications
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