Abstract
The achievement of high-efficiency oil/water separation has huge implications for protecting environment and reducing economic losses, but there is still a great challenge. Currently, most artificial oil/water separating materials are fabricated through complex preparation process, resulting in the very high cost of separation. In this paper, we present a simple and low-cost method to achieve oil/water separation by using the underwater superoleophobic materials that already exist in our life or nature. Taking filter paper and zeolite layer as examples, we show the inherent porous microstructures of these materials. Such porous microstructures endow filter paper and zeolite layer with strong ability to absorb water and the underwater superoleophobicity. Based on the porous feature and underwater superoleophobicity, the pre-wetted filter paper and zeolite layer can be used to effectively separate the mixture of water and oil, with great separation capacity. The existing materials (e.g., filter paper and zeolite layer) with both porous microstructure and underwater superoleophobicity in our life or nature are green and low-cost, and can be easily obtained. Such advantages allow those materials to potentially solve the pollution problems caused by the discharge of industrial oily wastewater and the oil-spill accidents.
Highlights
Frequent oil spills severely threaten the marine ecosystems and the health of coastal inhabitants
When the oil/water mixture was poured onto the pre-wetted filter paper or zeolite layer, only water could pass through these materials, while oil was maintained above the separating materials, achieving highefficiency oil/water separation
Similar to filter paper and zeolite layer, there are a mass of existing materials in our life or in nature having both inherent porous microstructures and underwater superoleophobicity
Summary
Frequent oil spills severely threaten the marine ecosystems and the health of coastal inhabitants. We introduce the method of using the existing materials in our life or nature to effectively separate the mixture of water and oil These materials have the features of inherent porous microstructure and underwater superoleophobicity. The common filter paper and the layer of zeolite particles have natural microscale porous structure and micro/nanoscale hierarchical rough surface texture. Such materials have strong ability to absorb water in air (i.e., the superhydrophilicity) and repel oil droplets in water (i.e., the underwater superoleophobicity). Filter paper and zeolite layer are selected as the examples to separate the mixture of water and oil Such common materials already exist in our life or nature. Deionized water and 1,2-dichloroethane were used as the main detecting water and oil
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