Porous graphene aerogels (GA) hold great promise for water purification due to their fascinating properties. However, the weak connection between graphene nanosheets make GA instable during practical applications. Herein, small organic molecule of cysteamine is selected as covalent crosslinker to fabricate graphene aerogel through a facile one-step methodology. The cysteamine can improve the porosity and mechanical stability of GA simultaneously, due to strong covalent crosslinking between graphene nanosheets. The resultant graphene/cysteamine aerogels (GCA) are ultra-light and compressible with excellent structural stability under different solution conditions. The GCA exhibit high adsorption capacity for various water pollutants, like MB (207.8 mg/g) and MO (70.2 mg/g). In addition, the maximum oil adsorption capacity can reach up to 251g/g and did not decreased obviously, even after regeneration by simple squeezing. As expected, the as-prepared aerogels, with high adsorption capacity and structural stability, have great potential to be used as recyclable and durable sorbents for water purification.

Covalent crosslinked graphene aerogel with stable structure for water purification

256th National Meeting (2018)

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