The efficient separation of highly viscous crude oil/water mixtures caused by offshore crude oil exploitation, marine transportation, and oil recovery is still a big challenge. Adsorption and filtration techniques are considered as powerful and renewable approaches for oil/water separation because of their low cost and simple operation. However, conventional adsorption and filtration materials show poor separation performance due to the extremely high viscosity of crude oil. A variety of advanced adsorption and filtration materials have been developed very recently for the improvement of the crude oil/water separation performance, such as oil adsorption materials with in situ thermogenesis and filtration membranes with self‐cleaning property. In this review, the background of crude oil and crude oil/water mixtures are first described. Then, the fundamental wetting theories are also presented. Furthermore, the state‐of‐the‐art materials for viscous crude oil/water separation based on adsorption and filtration techniques are summarized respectively, including the separation mechanisms, strategies, fabrication methods, and separation performance. Finally, the conclusions and challenges for the viscous crude oil/water mixture separation are discussed.

Thermostable nanoparticles have numerous applications in catalysis and in the oil/gas industry. However, synthesizing these nanoparticles requires expensive polymers. Here, a novel thermostable ferritin named PcFn, originally from the hyperthermophilic archaeon Pyrococcus yayanosii CH1, was overexpressed in Escherichia coli, purified and characterized, which could successfully direct the synthesis of thermostable magnetoferritins (M-PcFn) with monodispersed iron oxide nanoparticles in one step. Transmission electron microscopy and magnetic measurements show that the cores of the M-PcFn have an average diameter of 4.7 nm, are well-crystalline and superparamagnetic. Both the PcFn and M-PcFn can resist temperatures up to 110 C, which is significantly higher than for human H-chain ferritin (HFn) and M-HFn, and comparable to temperatures previously reported for Pyrococcus furiosus ferritin (PfFn) and M-PfFn. After heating at 110 C for 30 minutes, PcFn and M-PcFn maintained their secondary structures and PcFn retained 87.4% of its iron uptake activity. This remarkable thermostability of PcFn and M-PcFn suggests potential applications in elevated temperature environments.

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