Abstract
Rapid cleanup of oil spill is becoming a great challenge since crude oil is hard to clean up by conventional porous oil sorbents because of its high viscosity. Herein, novel fabrication of a hydrophobic/oleophilic and photothermal polydopamine (PDA)/FeCo2S4/polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) coated polyurethane (PU) sponge using chemical polymerization and dip‐coating methods is reported. The optimized composite sponge exhibits high hydrophobicity, high absorption capacity for oils and organic liquids, excellent chemical resistance, and stable recycling. Furthermore, PDA/FeCo2S4/PDMS@PU sponge shows outstanding photothermal conversion capability. Under sunlight irradiation, crude oil viscosity can be reduced by two orders of magnitude due to the rapid temperature rise in PDA/FeCo2S4/PDMS@PU sponge. In addition, a method of in situ pumping for uninterrupted recovery of oil spills from the water surface is designed. Benefiting from great mechanical performance and photothermal conversion capacity, the PDA/FeCo2S4/PDMS@PU sponge can be regarded as an ideal sorbent candidate for the collection of crude oil and treatment of large‐scale oil spill disasters.
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