Hydrophobic and oleophilic sorbents play an important role in the remediation processes of oil spills/leakages occurring globally from time to time. In this work, for the first time, lotus-seedpod-bioinspired 3D superhydrophobic diatomite porous ceramics with good mechanical strength and thermal stability were fabricated, using inexpensive porous diatomite as a substrate, and graphene/carbon nanobelts as modifiers. Thanks to the presence of graphene coating and in situ formed carbon nanobelts, the surface energy of the final porous ceramics was reduced and their surface roughness increased, conferring superhydrophobicity on them. As-prepared porous ceramics demonstrated 3-30 times higher adsorption capacity in oil/water separation than their conventional inorganic sorbent materials, and had compressive strength 70-270 times higher than that of a sponge/graphene-based sorbent material. The present work could additionally offer a new strategy for the treatment/recycle of waste plastics, the so-called "white pollution".
Keywords: carbon nanobelt; graphene; hierarchical pore ceramic; oil/water separation; superhydrophobicity.