Fabrication of superwetting and antimicrobial wood-based mesoporous composite decorated with silver nanoparticles for purifying the polluted-water with oils, dyes and bacteria

Nowadays, organic pollutants (oils, aromatic compounds and dyes) released from the chemical industry are the main water pollutants, which greatly impact on the environment. To fix the defects of conventional materials such as single pollutant type, complicated process, low efficiency, high cost and difficult maintenance, etc., we present a novel, efficient, low-cost and green [email protected] composite for simultaneously purifying the wastewater containing multiple pollutants. Specifically, Ag+ was reduced to Ag NP and successfully anchored onto Balsa wood. [email protected] product with best performance was obtained by using 0.05 mol L−1 AgNO3 to treat the wood (7 mm). As a filter, its degradation efficiency towards methylene blue (MB) reached up to 94.4%, displaying the excellent catalytic performance. Under simulated sunlight, its removal efficiency towards rhodamine B (RhB) was more than 81.3% when the [email protected] served as the dye adsorbent with photocatalysis. In addition, [email protected] has the excellent superhydrophilicity and underwater superoleophobicity (OCA = 153°), thus owns the remarkable separation efficiency for oil-in-water emulsions (even with high salinity and different pH). Notably, inactivation rates of E. coli, S. aureus and B. subtilis after [email protected] treatment reached up to 99.97%, 99.98% and 99.98%, which would bring us great environmental and economic benefits in its future practical application.