Bacterial cellulose nanofibrous ion imprinted aerogel for highly efficient recognition and adsorption of Dy(III)

The highly selective recovery of Dy(III) from used rare earth products has high environmental and economic benefits. In this paper, biocompatible bacterial cellulose with a unique 3D network structure was used as the basic structure, graphene oxide and polyethylene glycol were introduced to increase the adsorption capacity, and the ion imprinting technology was used to prepare a green aerogel that could adsorb dysprosium ions with a high selectivity. The various properties of aerogels were characterized by SEM, FT-IR and BET. Experiments proved that the introduction of graphene oxide and polyethylene glycol brought a higher stability and repeatability to aerogel, and the introduction of a large number of carboxyl groups also promoted the effective coordination of aerogel with dysprosium. Adsorption experiments showed that I-GO-OBC-pDA-PEG aerogel could effectively adsorb dysprosium, and its maximum adsorption capacity for Dy(III) was 49.904 mg g−1, and its maximum adsorption capacity was 10 mg g−1 higher than that of the non-imprinted aerogel, which was a good proof of the effectiveness of the ion imprinting technology. The repeatability test showed that after five adsorption-desorption cycles, the adsorption capacity of the imprinted aerogel was maintained at about 80% of the maximum adsorption capacity. All results showed that I-GO-OBC-pDA-PEG aerogel could efficiently recover dysprosium ions.