Facile construction of multifunctional bio-aerogel for efficient separation of surfactant-stabilized oil-in-water emulsions and co-existing organic pollutant

The deep treatment of robust oily emulsion wastewater has long been an arduous challenge. Herein, a biomass-derived PEI-TiO2@Gelatin aerogel (PEI-TiO2@GA) with honeycomb-like porous structure was fabricated. The interface wetting characteristics of PEI-TiO2@GA could be selectively switched between the superlipophilicity and superoleophobicity through the merely pre-wetting process. Combined with extraordinary structure and superwetting properties, PEI-TiO2@GA was proved to be ideal for oils absorption (17–26 g/g) and MO dye adsorption (73.549 mg/g) with high up-taking rate. Simultaneously, as-prepared PEI-TiO2@GA could realize various surfactant-stabilized oil-in-water emulsions separation simply under gravity with the separation efficiency as high as 99.25%. In addition, PEI-TiO2@GA was highly resistant toward mechanical compression (1.952 MPa), and exhibited acceptable regenerability within 5 cycles by performing solvent replacement approach. Combining with the newly developed separator and dynamic emulsion separation device, the continuous deep separation of the emulsion and the synergistic removal of co-existing pollutants can be achieved with the enhanced separation efficiency and permeation flux. Most importantly, the mechanism results show that the transition of interface wetting properties was a reversible multi-step process, and the demulsification separation of emulsion and the adsorption removal of co-existing pollutants were two independent processes. This work opens up a new avenue to customize advanced bio-aerogels for industrial effluent treatment and environmental remediation.