High structure stability and outstanding adsorption performance of graphene oxide aerogel supported by polyvinyl alcohol for waste water treatment

In this work, we developed a new kind of aerogel consisting of graphene oxide (GO) and polyvinyl alcohol(PVA), in which PVA exhibited a role to stabilize the 3D porous structure of GO. The PVA-supported GO aerogels were prepared through an environmentally friendly freeze-drying technique. The microstructure, the structure stability, the adsorption ability for different dyestuffs, and the oil/water separation of the aerogels were systematically investigated. The results demonstrated that the PVA-supported GO aerogels exhibited outstanding performances. First, the PVA-supported GO aerogels exhibited high structure stability, especially in the non-polar solvent, which was apparently different from the widely reported GO aerogels in the literatures which experienced structure collapse in the solvent, especially in water. Second, the aerogels also exhibited high absorption selectivity for dyes, especially for the dyes with positive charges; the adsorption efficiency was over 96%. Third, the PVA-supported GO aerogels still exhibited excellent oil/water separation ability and they can completely adsorb Sudan red/cyclohexane solution that floats on the water within 5 s. This work provides a simple and environmentally friendly method to obtain the versatile GO aerogel, which really has a great potential in the field of waste water treatment. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.