A chalcone organic gel for oil spill recovery and wastewater treatment

Oil spillage and water pollution are serious environmental disasters, which have a serious impact on the economy and ecosystem. To protect the environment,we have synthesized a new type of chalcone derivative (G1) gel. G1 can form gels in many organic solvents, fuels and edible oils. The FT-IR, SEM and XRD studies show that there are pi-pi stacking, Van der Waals and intermolecular H-bonding force in the G1 gel self-assembly process. 3D networks structure provides a strong basis for the adsorption of dyes and the adsorption efficiency could be as high as 97.2%. The G1 can selectively gel in organic water pollutants, with recyclability. Even in the presence of salt, acid and alkali, it can be successfully used to recover spilled oil from oil-water mixture.