Abstract
The oil spill and industrial oily wastewater in large quantities has caused severe harm to the environment and human health, which make an urgent requirement to develop low-cost, eco-friendly, stable performance and highly efficient oil/water separation materials. Herein, a superhydrophobic/superlipophilic melamine sponge with excellent hydrophobic stability was successfully fabricated via one-step emulsion polymerization. During polymerization, trimethylolpropane triacrylate (TMPTA) and polyethylene imine (PEI) form robust microspheres, and polydimethylsilane (PDMS) cross-links to form hydrophobic coating on the original sponge skeleton. The modified sponge could continuously separate various immiscible oil/water mixtures under harsh conditions (including strong acids, strong bases, salts). Even after 10 consecutive cycles, the separation efficiency for toluene and petroleum ether exceeds 99.87%. In addition, the as-prepared sponge exhibited extraordinarily high oil absorption capacities (with a maximum saturated oil absorption of 107.31 g/g for chloroform) and excellent reversible compressibility (up to 100 compression cycles). More importantly, the pore size of modified sponge was adjusted through a simple mechanical compression strategy so that the compressed sponge met the particle size screening requirements to effectively separate the surfactant-stabilized water-in-oil emulsions. Based on the simple preparation protocol, fluorine-free raw materials, and excellent properties, the MS-TMPTA/PEI-PDMS sponge presented here have extremely promising application potential in oil/water separation.
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