Abstract
Although the present superhydrophobic sands have been demonstrated to be effective for oil/water separation and water storage, they still suffer from high-cost and difficult industrial application, resulting from their expensive raw materials, complicated fabrication procedures and fluorine-containing. In this paper, we demonstrated a facile method to synthesize stable superhydrophobic quartz sands by two step surface modification. SiO2 nanoparticles are bonding onto the surface of micro-sand skeletons (110–150 μm) for conducting rounghneess structure, and then modify them with low-surface-energy hexadecyltrime-thoxysilane (HDTMS) to form a molecule protection layer. The as-prepared sands (HDTMS-sand@SiO2) exhibit a high WCA of 163 ± 2.0°, a low sliding angle of 5°, and a oil contact angle of about 0°. In addition, the HDTMS-sand@SiO2 retains superhydrophobicity after ultrasonication in petroleum ether, heating below 225 °C, irradiation with ultraviolet, and soaking in strong acidic and strong alkaline solutions, exhibiting sufficient stability against the harsh physicochemical environment of oil/water separation and some others. Particularly, superhydrophobic sands exhibit a outstanding drag reduction ability in a sand-filled core. Significantly, HDTMS-sand@SiO2 as a filter can leach oil phase and prevent water phase, which exhibits a good separation efficiency of oil/water mixture, water-in-oil and oil-in-brine emulsions. Thanks to the cheap and available raw materials, stable structure and high separation efficiency as well as low production cost (<150 USD per ton), this approach could find promising applications in the treatment of oily wastewater and petroleum development.
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More From: Colloids and Surfaces A: Physicochemical and Engineering Aspects
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