Three-dimensional attapulgite with sandwich-like architecture used for multifunctional water remediation

Abstract With the development of social economy, large quantities of oily wastewater discharged from our daily life and industries have already threatened human health and natural environment. Generally, during wastewater treatment, there are other pollutants including dyes and heavy metal ions in water apart from various kinds of oils. Therefore, how to remove these pollutants during the emulsion separation is of great significance. More recently, some membranes with underwater superoleophobic property have been ready to separate various oil-in-water emulsions. However, the fabrication of majority of these superwetting membranes involves complicated process control, special equipment and expensive reagents, which further restricts the multifunction of practical large-scale applications. Herein, the three-dimensional attapulgite (APT) layer with sandwich-like architecture was fabricated by a facile and universal applicable approach without any further modification of the original membranes. This method employs ordinary material with underwater superoleophobicity towards the effective and fast separation of different oil-in-water emulsions and adsorption of organic dyes and heavy metal ions. Compared with the fabrication methods of traditional coatings, the design thought of this paper is universal and brand-new that can easily be applied to a broad range of materials. This work can provide more novel ideas for the fabrication of oil/water separating materials, leading to multifunctional water purification.