Solvent-free one-step mechanochemical synthesis of magnetic graphene composite adsorbent for efficient removal of multiple aflatoxins in vegetable oils

Aflatoxin-contaminated vegetable oils pose severe threats to human health. Although magnetic graphene-based materials can be used for aflatoxins (AFs) removal, their current preparation methods involve complex, multi-step procedures and are time-consuming. Herein, we proposed a simple, efficient and solvent-free mechanochemical approach for one-step synthesis of magnetic graphene composite (MGC) directly from graphite and Fe 3 O 4 . The MGC was used as an adsorbent to remove four AFs from vegetable oils, and the adsorption mechanism was further explored by conducting batch adsorption experiments. The results demonstrated that MGC could simultaneously remove 85.8–100 % of AFs from 13 types of oils within 60 min at 30 °C. The detoxification process exhibited low cytotoxicity towards HepG2 cells, and has little effect on the quality of oils. Thus, MGC exhibited promising application potential for vegetable oil detoxification in food industry due to its facile scalable production, efficient detoxification capability, good biosafety, and easy recovery and regeneration.