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

Fail Sultanov,Chingis Daulbayev,Zulkhair Mansurov,Shin-Shem Pei,A Urazgaliyeva,Marat Tulepov,B Bakbolat,Rabi Ebrahim

doi:10.18321/ectj286

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.

Highlights

Aerogels obtained by chemical reduction of GO [1,2,3], as well as composite aerogels with additives of CNTs [4,5,6], represent a class of highly porous lightweight materials
Aerogels based on carbon nanomaterials (CNMs) are excellent regenerable and hydrophobic sorbents for organic liquids of different densities [6,7,8,9]
The pre-cleaned by ultrasonic treatment sponge was placed in a dispersion of multiwalled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) in ethyl acetate, kept inside for a certain period of time, removed and dried to constant weight

Summary

Introduction

Aerogels obtained by chemical reduction of GO [1,2,3], as well as composite aerogels with additives of CNTs [4,5,6], represent a class of highly porous lightweight materials. The possibility of using of the existing skeleton with a specific surface morphology and porosity, the walls of which can be coated by CNMs is an interesting and promising direction It can significantly reduce the cost of the final product in view of reduction of consumption of used CNMs, secondly, it significantly reduces complexity of the process of obtaining of these adsorbents, and thirdly, there is a possibility of fast production of these sorbents. During the research a low-cost method of “dip-coating” was developed for coating the commercially available melamine and PU sponges by carbon nanomaterials in order to create superhydrophobic and sorbing organic liquid sponges These sponges can absorb both water and organic liquids, but after coating their walls with CNMs, with MWCNTs and GO, obtained sponges actively repel water, i.e. become hydrophobic

Experimental

Results and discussion

Conclusions