Biocarbons as emerging and sustainable hydrophobic/oleophilic sorbent materials for oil/water separation

• Published in: Sustainable Materials and Technologies 2021-07, Vol.28, p.e00268, Article e00268
• Main Authors: Sankaranarayanan, Sivashunmugam, Lakshmi, Duraikkannu Shanthana, Vivekanandhan, Singaravelu, Ngamcharussrivichai, Chawalit
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Biocarbon; Hydrophobic; Oil/water separation; Oleophilic; Sorption; Water pollution
• ISSN: 2214-9937; 2214-9937
• DOI: 10.1016/j.susmat.2021.e00268

Oil/water separation receives increasing interest as the oil contaminants level has been continuously increasing in the water resources in most of parts of the world and is being considered as a severe environmental threat to the society. As the result, a wide range of methods have been investigated in order to minimize the oil-based contaminants (including non-polar organic solvents which are immiscible in water) in water resources, where sorption process has been widely accepted owing to their easy handling, rapid, low-cost, harmless and efficient large-scale approach. Out of the sorbents explored, carbon-based materials gained more interest in oil/water separation because of their superior physicochemical properties as well as structural advantages. The recent advancement in the carbon-based oil/water separation technology is the exploration of various renewable resource-based biocarbon materials as green and sustainable approach and their modifications to enhance the sorption properties. The advantages of renewable- biocarbon materials are, vast availability and diversity of resources with wide-range of chemical compositions, tuning/predicting the structures by choosing specific precursors and flexible structural/chemical modifications to improve the properties. Thus, the present review deals with reported biocarbon-based hydrophobic/oleophilic materials such as biochar, activated biocarbon, biocarbon fibers, biocarbon aerogels and biocarbon-based composite materials as sorbents for oil/water separation, as well as oil spill cleanup from water resources. In detail, various synthetic procedures of biocarbon materials and their physicochemical characteristics (hydrophobicity/oleophilicity, wettability, water/oil contact angle, etc.) are discussed in this review. [Display omitted] •Oil spill up and organic solvents discharge are the critical part of the water pollution.•The sorption process has been widely explored to handle these issues.•Recent advancement in this field is the biocarbon based oil/water separation approach.•This review summarizes biocarbon based sorption process for oil/water separation.