Spongy Structures Coated with Carbon Nanomaterials for Efficient Oil/Water Separation

Abstract

Rapid progress of processing and transportation of oil and petroleum products may cause disaster for environment like oil spill. Oil booms, combustion, and oil skimmer vessels are usually used to clean up the oil spill, but often with poor efficiency and even with undesirable environmental side effects. With obtaining of carbon nanomaterials (CNMs) (graphene, carbon nanotubes) and developing inexpensive technologies for their synthesis it has become perspective to use them for creation of 3D structures which may serve as a hydrophobic sorbents for oil and petroleum products. In this study, sponges coated with carbon nanomaterials were obtained using “dip-coating” method. Walls of commercially available polyurethane (PU) and melamine sponges were coated with reduced graphene oxide (rGO) and multiwalled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs). The resulting sponges are characterized by excellent mechanical properties, they are superhydprophobic, and they fully repel water and at the same time selectively absorb oil and organic liquids of different densities. We believe that superhydrophobic and superoleophilic sponges, the walls of which are coated with CNMs, are perspective candidates for reusable sorbents for collection of oil and petroleum products from the surface of water and moreover due to its excellent mechanical properties they can serve as a hydrophobic filtering materials for separation of oil from the surface of water.