Directly Coating Hydrogel on Filter Paper for Effective Oil–Water Separation in Highly Acidic,Alkaline, and Salty Environment

The separation of oil–water mixtures in highly acidic, alkaline, and salty environment remains a great challenge. Simple, low‐cost, efficient, eco‐friendly, and easily scale‐up processes for the fabrication of novel materials to effective oil–water separation in highly acidic, alkaline, and salty environment, are urgently desired. Here, a facile approach is reported for the fabrication of stable hydrogel‐coated filter paper which not only can separate oil–water mixture in highly acidic, alkaline, and salty environment, but also separate surfactant‐stabilized emulsion. The hydrogel‐coated filter paper is fabricated by smartly crosslinking filter paper with hydrophilic polyvinyl alcohol through a simple aldol condensation reaction with glutaraldehyde as a crosslinker. The resultant multiple crosslinked networks enable the hydrogel‐coated filter paper to tolerate high acid, alkali, and salt up to 8 m H₂SO₄, 10 m NaOH, and saturated NaCl. It is shown that the hydrogel‐coated filter paper can separate oil–water mixtures in highly acidic, alkaline, and salty environment and oil‐in‐water emulsion environment, with high separation efficiency (>99%).