Monoglyceride-based organogelator for broad-range oil uptake with high capacity

Oil/water separation has been a worldwide subject because of increasing release of oil-containing wastewater as well as several marine oil spills. The phase-selective organogelators (PSOGs) are thought to offer a potential and effective implement for addressing this issue. An ideal PSOG for oil adsorption must fulfill some requirements involving effective gelation, easy synthesis, low cost, and recyclable for reuse. However, beyond those, the ability of gelation for a broad-range oil phase without selectivity is also important. However, most of the reported PSOGs have limitation in this respect thus far. In this paper, a new class of saturated 1-monoglyceride-derived organogelators can efficiently uptake almost all of the common fuel oils from water and gelate organic solvents with extremely low minimum gelation concentration (MGC). In addition, the oils in the gel and gelator molecules can be recovered quantitatively through simple vacuum distillation.