  Environmental disasters, such as the oil spill in Mexico gulf or, more
recently, the Mauritius oil spill caused by a bulk carrier vessel, are some of
the ecological issues that the modern society faces frequently. These accidents
highlight the need for development of efficient materials that can be employed
to eliminate pollutants including crude oil and its derivatives, as well as
toxic organic solvents. The objective of the present study is to achieve the
synthesis of graphene aerogels with two main methods and to determine their
efficiency as absorbents of liquid and gas pollutants. Graphene aerogels were
prepared according to the information given by Hong et al. (2015) and Yang et
al. (2015). Both methods are based on the chemical reduction of graphene oxide
as the first step and the formation of the aerogel as the second, providing a
more cost-effective solution and resulting in a lattice structure similar to
graphene. The fabricated materials were investigated for their absorption
capacity for liquid and gas pollutants. The specimens were mounted in airtight
microenvironments saturated with a specific Volatile Organic Compound (VOC).
Three VOCs were tested; formaldehyde, acetic acid and hydrochloric acid and the
results were based on gravimetric measurements. In order to increase the
accuracy of the obtained data, a VOCs sensor was used to measure the change of
voltage before and after the introduction of graphene aerogels in a saturated
microenvironment. Furthermore, the graphene aerogels were evaluated as
absorbents in organic solvents, namely acetone, ethanol and methanol.
