Nowadays, the contamination of water due to oily waste is causing a serious threat to the environment. There is a need of a method that possesses a simple treatment route, low operational cost and high durability. The oil-water extractors, using magnetic-hydrophobic nanoparticles, act as an efficient method to separate the oil present in the waste water. In this study, thermal plasma system was developed which was found to be the effective and eco-friendly method for materials processing such as the production of superhydrophobic sphere-shaped nickel nanoparticles used oil/water separation process. The chemical composition, morphology and crystal structure of synthesized nanoparticles were investigated by XRD, TEMand XPS. The saturation magnetization (Ms) 45.26 emu/g, coercivity (Hc) 91.8 Oe and remanent magnetization (Mr) 6.65 emu/g of synthesized nickel nanoparticle at room temperature were investigated by using the VSM technique. Synthesized Nickel nanoparticles have high oil absorption capacity, rapid absorption rate and are ideal reusable for oil-water separation treatment. The nickel-coated sponge was found to be superhydrophobic and superoleophilic, respectively, with a water interaction angle of 150.8º for water and 0º for oil. Thus, the nanoparticles coated sponge has a separation efficiency of more than 98%, in separating both the heavy and light oils from oily-water. The separation recycling of the petrol/water mixture remained more than 96% even after 20 separation cycles.
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