Indexed on: 27 May '19Published on: 22 Mar '19Published in: Industrial & Engineering Chemistry
This contribution reports a novel type of biobased, porous, functional material [poly(high internal phase emulsions), polyHIPEs] prepared from vanillin and laurinol derivatives. The polyHIPEs demonstrate high porosity (90%), low density (0.0935 g/cm3), and high specific surface area (38.6 m2/g). Owing to the multilevel pore structures (cell, window, and skeleton pores) and the chemical compositions, the polyHIPEs demonstrate suprahydrophobicity, with a water contact angle exceeding 160°, and excellent lipophilicity. The polyHIPEs are further explored as an oil adsorbent. The oil adsorption capacity increases upon increasing the water–oil ratio in the recipe for forming HIPEs and increases up to 40.9 g/g toward chloroform. The recycling use experiments prove that the materials’ oil adsorption ability can be well-maintained at least 10 times. The materials also demonstrate rapid oil adsorption capability. The polyHIPEs’ advantages, i.e., being derived from biomass and showing high oil-adsorption capacity and satisfactory recycling usability, endow them with promising potential as sustainable oil adsorbents.