TDA/rGO@WS with Joule heat and photothermal synergistic effect: A promising adsorption material for all–weather recovery of viscous oil spills at sea

Abstract

Oil spills are a global environmental protection challenge, and traditional adsorption materials have poor effect on low temperature and high viscosity marine oil spills. This article reports composite adsorption materials TDA/rGO@WS for viscous oil spills: loaded with rGO/TDA coating on a commercial biomass wood pulp sponge (WS), achieving Joule heating, photothermal effect and hydrophobic modification. The results showed that the TDA/rGO@WS has good photothermal conversion ability and Joule heating ability, and the temperature increased to 83.7 °C and 148 °C, respectively, under simulated solar irradiation and additional voltage at room temperature. The efficiency of adsorption at a low temperature of 5 °C increased by 22.41% at 1 sun and by 51.53% at 10 V. Temperature effectively reduced the viscosity of the offshore oil spill and ensures the efficient adsorption of oil spills at low temperatures promoted. The TDA/rGO@WS also showed good hydrophobicity (WCA=129°), excellent efficiency of water–oil separation (99.53%) and good adsorption capacity (9.4–13.68 g/g) for marine fuel oils. TDA/rGO@WS effectively solves the problem of cleaning up high–viscosity oil spills from ships in winter and polar waters, and proposes a new strategy for all–weather efficient treatment of oil spills at sea.