Resource recovery of Eichhornia crassipes as oil superabsorbent.

The elastic cellulose-based aerogels (CBAs) with highly porous (99.56%) and low-density (0.0065gcm) were prepared using Eichhornia crassipes as cellulose source and polyvinyl alcohol directly as cross-linker via a facile and environment-friendly process. The prepared CBAs exhibited excellent oil/solvent sorption capacities (60.33-152.21gg), super-hydrophobicity (water contact angle of 156.7°) as well as remarkable reusability. More importantly, the absorbed oil could be quickly recovered by simple squeezing without significantly structure damage (at least 16 times). All these merits make CBAs very promising materials for oil spillage cleaning.