Carbon nanofiber based superhydrophobic foam composite for high performance oil/water separation

Zheng Guo; Biao Long; Shijie Gao; Junchen Luo; Ling Wang; Xuewu Huang; Dong Wang; Huaiguo Xue; Jiefeng Gao

doi:10.1016/j.jhazmat.2020.123838

Carbon nanofiber based superhydrophobic foam composite for high performance oil/water separation

J Hazard Mater. 2021 Jan 15:402:123838. doi: 10.1016/j.jhazmat.2020.123838. Epub 2020 Sep 3.

Authors

Zheng Guo¹, Biao Long¹, Shijie Gao¹, Junchen Luo¹, Ling Wang¹, Xuewu Huang¹, Dong Wang¹, Huaiguo Xue¹, Jiefeng Gao²

Affiliations

¹ School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Yangzhou University, Yangzhou, Jiangsu, 225002, China.
² School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Yangzhou University, Yangzhou, Jiangsu, 225002, China; State Key Laboratory of Polymer Materials Engineering, Sichuan University, Chengdu, Sichuan 610065, China. Electronic address: jfgao@yzu.edu.cn.

PMID: 33254815
DOI: 10.1016/j.jhazmat.2020.123838

Abstract

Oil spill has now been a serious environmental issue, threatening the aquatic ecosystems and even human living environment. It is still challenging to develop absorbents for efficient oil/water emulsion separation and clean-up of viscous crude oil. Here, we propose a facile method to fabricate flexible and superhydrophobic foam composites for high efficiency oil/water separation under different complex environment. Carbon nanofibers (CNFs) with a hollow structure are decorated uniformly onto the skeleton of the polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) foam with a strong interfacial adhesion. CNFs could not only enhance the surface roughness and thus the hydrophobicity but also be served as numerous capillary tubes, improving the oil adsorption and oil/water separation performance. More importantly, the CNFs network with a strong light absorption endows the foam with superior photo-thermal conversion capability. The obtained foam composite possesses excellent corrosion resistance and can adsorb various kinds of oil with different densities. The foam composite is able to separate the oil from the emulsion with a relatively high separation efficiency. The material surface temperature is able to quickly increase under the light irradiation, which can significantly reduce the oil viscosity and hence achieve the rapid clean-up of the crude oil floating on water surface.

Keywords: Carbon nanofibers; Crude oil; Oil/water separation; Photo-thermal conversion; Polydimethylsiloxane foam.