Magnetic and Highly Recyclable Macroporous Carbon Nanotubes for Spilled Oil Sorption and Separation

Abstract

Development of sorbent materials with high selectivity and sorption capacity, easy collection and recyclability is demanding for spilled oil recovery. Although many sorption materials have been proposed, a systematic study on how they can be reused and possible performance degradation during regeneration remains absent. Here we report magnetic carbon nanotube sponges (Me-CNT sponge), which are porous structures consisting of interconnected CNTs with rich Fe encapsulation. The Me-CNT sponges show high mass sorption capacity for diesel oil reached 56 g/g, corresponding to a volume sorption capacity of 99%. The sponges are mechanically strong and oil can be squeezed out by compression. They can be recycled using through reclamation by magnetic force and desorption by simple heat treatment. The Me-CNT sponges maintain original structure, high capacity, and selectivity after 1000 sorption and reclamation cycles. Our results suggest that practical application of CNT macrostructures in the field of spilled oil recovery is feasible.

3D Self‐Supporting Porous Magnetic Assemblies for Water Remediation and Beyond

“…Moreover, 3D-SPMAs can also acquire certain novel properties or functions, such as magnetic field induced structures modulation and magnetic shape memory effects. [35][36][37] In past few years, a number of 3D-SPMAs based on commercial foams/sponges, [33,34,[38][39][40] carbon material aerogels, [41][42][43] polymers aerogels, [44,45] and hydrogels [46][47][48][49][50] have been fabricated, showing great promise in water remediation and other applications. These 3D-SPMAs are constructed by either bottom-up assembly of magnetic building blocks or modifying as-existing 3D nonmagnetic networks with magnetic materials.…”

“…[35,38,41,58,59,[91][92][93] For example, Brown et al prepared low-density Fe 2 ZnO 4 aerogels (≈12-15 mg cm -3 ) by epoxide-induced co-precipitation of ferric nitrate and zinc nitrate followed by supercritical drying. [58] For some metal salts with low solubility, templating can be an alternative choice.…”

“…[106] In the second class, the hydrophobicity was in situ introduced in materials during their preparation. [41,62,94,97,98,101,107] For one case, the hydrophobic additives can be enrolled in the fabrication process. [94,98,107] Yang et al [107] have developed an extremely facile method to prepared hydrophobic magnetic sponges by simply immersing the pristine sponges in the Fe 3 O 4 nanoparticle toluene suspension followed by combustion.…”

External‐Field‐Induced Gradient Wetting for Controllable Liquid Transport: From Movement on the Surface to Penetration into the Surface

“…[147,148] To further achieve robust oil-water separation in strong acidic and basic conditions, Gui et al fabricated a magnetoresponsive hydrophobic carbon-nanotube sponge for oil-absorption applications with highly stable properties. [149] Furthermore, porous silicone sponges can also be used to selectively absorb floating oils, underwater heavy oils, and emulsified oils. [150] In addition to the separation of simple oil-water mixtures, surfactant-stabilized water-in-oil (W/O) emulsions can also be separated by porous materials based on selective absorption.…”

A microwave synthesized mesoporous carbon sponge as an efficient adsorbent for Cr(vi) removal

“…It has several variants, including activated carbon (AC), 14 magnetic carbon nanocomposites (MCNs), [15][16][17][18] carbon nanobers (CNFs), 19 carbon nanotubes (CNTs), 20,21 carbon membranes (CMs), 8,9 carbon sponge (CS), [22][23][24] and carbon aerogel (CA). [25][26][27][28][29] Until now, some successful strategies such as the thermal decomposition, 12 electrochemical deposition, 30,31 layer-by-layer technique, 20,32 self-assembly, 33 and synergistically assembly 29 were employed for the synthesis of advanced mesoporous carbon materials.…”