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The demand for energy‐efficient water treatment as well as the limitation in adsorption of existing membranes has motivated the pursuit of membranes that can break the selectivity‐permeability trade‐off and provide high selective adsorption for chemicals of interest. The membrane adsorbers have received a lot of attention for removing contaminants from aqueous solution due to combine both advantages of adsorption and membrane separation. Membrane adsorbers constructed by biopolymer with many functional groups are widely used in water purification, because the biopolymers are easily available from biomass materials in nature, degradable, and low‐cost. This paper summarizes the characteristics and important development direction of these types of biomass‐based membrane adsorption materials to adsorb organic/inorganic contaminants of water and analyzes the preparation methods of natural biomacromolecule cellulose, chitosan, sodium alginate, and protein to construct the membrane adsorption materials, as well as the application of pollutant removal from aqueous solutions. According to the current problems and shortcomings in the research of biopolymer‐based membrane adsorbers, it is proposed to improve the understanding of the adsorption mechanism of biopolymer‐based membrane adsorbers and accelerate the development of practical applications as the focus of future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A promising route to the synthesis of protein‐mimetic materials that are capable of strong mechanics and complex functions is provided by intermolecular β‐sheet stacking. An understanding of the assembly mechanism on β‐sheet stacking at molecular‐level and the related influencing factors determine the potential to design polymorphs of such biomaterials towards broad applications. Herein, we quantitatively reveal the air/water interface (AWI) parameters regulating the transformation from crowding amorphous aggregates to ordered phase and show that the polymorph diversity of β‐sheet stacking is regulated by the chain relaxation‐crystallization mechanism. An amorphous macroscale amyloid‐like nanofilm is formed at the AWI, in which unfolded protein chains are aligned in a short‐range manner to form randomly packed β‐sheets. The subsequent biopolymer chain relaxation‐crystallization to form nanocrystals is further triggered by removing the limitations of energy and space at the AWI. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT The walnut shell supported nanoscale zero-valent iron (walnut-nZVI) was prepared from sodium borohydride, iron(II) chloride tetrahydrate, and walnut shell by liquid phase chemical reduction and characterized by FTIR, TEM, and XRD. The composites were tested as adsorbent for the removal of Cu(II) or Ni(II) ions. The equilibrium data were analyzed by the Langmuir, Freundlich, Dubinin-Radushkevich, which revealed that Langmuir isotherm was more suitable for describing Cu(II) and Ni(II) ions adsorption than the other two isotherm models. The results indicated that the maximum adsorption capacity was higher than some other modified biomass waste adsorbents under the proposed conditions, were 458.7, 327.9 mg g−1 for Cu(II) or Ni(II). The adsorption kinetics data indicated that the adsorption fitted well with the pseudo-second-order kinetic model. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Appl. Polym. Sci. 2016, 133, 43304. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]