Engineering Surface Functional Groups on Silica Aerogel for Enhanced Cleanup of Organics from Produced Water

Engineering the surface functional groups of silica aerogels has resulted in greatly enhanced separation capabilities. This approach is used to design a material that is effective at reducing the dissolved organic components of produced water. This study reports the initial results of removing dissolved hydrophobic organics using a hydro-phobic (CH 2 CH 2 CF 3 ) surface group on the silica aerogel. The 30% by weight formulation CF 3 -aerogel was able to adsorb dissolved organic species with log K ow > 2.0, with adsorption affinity increasing with increasing log K ow . Seawater salinities did not have a large effect on the adsorption of aromatic compounds. Most dissolved aromatics and organic acids with the same log K ow that were tested had differing affinities for the CF 3 -aerogel, with the aromatics affinity being greater. These results show the utility of modifying the aerogel surface hydrophobicity for absorbing hydro-phobic dissolved organic compounds.