Lightweight and Highly Adsorptive Cellulose Beads Fabricated in Ionic Liquid: One-Pot Synthesis and Their Application

As a newly developed material, functional cellulose beads have been receiving considerable attention due to their environmentally friendly and multifunctional properties. Herein, we present a facile process for the preparation of lightweight and high adsorptive cellulose beads modified by acetylation, benzoylation and tosylation in an ionic liquid (EmimAc), respectively. To evaluate the potential application as adsorbent for wastewater treatment, the adsorption of organic dyes was also investigated. The results indicated that the modified cellulose beads displayed a homogeneous and porous network structure combined with an extremely low density (0.03-0.07 g/m(3)). In comparison, the benzoate cellulose and tosylate cellulose samples exhibited higher adsorption capacity, which showed that the introduced group played an important roles in the improvement of the adsorption capacity. The adsorption kinetics experiments indicated that the relevant data could be satisfactorily fitted by the Langmuir model equation. In addition, the modified cellulose beads could be easily recycled, offering outstanding cycling capability with more than 94% of the removal efficiency for organic dyes after 3 cycles. These findings illustrate that the modified cellulose beads materials are promising candidates for applications in sewage treatment and provide a simple and "green" pathway for fabrication of functional cellulose beads.