Lotus and Poikilotherm Inspired Adsorbent with Superior Photothermal
Effects for the Cleanup of High-viscous Crude Oil
Abstract
The frequent occurrence of oil spills not only results in the waste of
petroleum resources, but also poses a serious threat to the marine
ecological environment. Considering the large amount of crude oils with
high viscosity, it is urgent to develop an adsorbent capable of
efficiently reducing the viscosity for the cleanup of oil spills.
Inspired by the “lotus effect” and “poikilotherm which utilize the
solar energy for thermoregulation”, the low surface energy material
polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) and polypyrrole (PPy) were loaded over the
island nonwoven fabric to fabricate a novel crude oil adsorbent
material. Wherein, the fluorine-free PDMS was used to hydrophobically
modify the nonwoven fabric, endowing it with excellent oil-water
separation performance, with a separation efficiency of up to 95%.
After 10 cycles, the separation efficiency of PPy/PDMS modified nonwoven
fabric (PPy/PDMS@NF) was still above 90%, demonstrating superior
recyclability. In addition, the PPy/PDMS@NF possessed the self-cleaning
capabilities. Under one sun illumination (1.0 kW/m2), the surface
temperature of the PPy/PDMS@NF reached to 60.7 ℃, and its adsorption
capacity for high-viscosity crude oil reached to 7 gcrude oil/gsorbent.
Thanks to its environmental friendliness and excellent adsorption
capacity, this work provides a new option for dealing with the
high-viscosity marine oil spill.