Superhydrophobic/superoleophilic magnetic polyurethane sponge for oil/water separation

Abstract

Oil/water separation is a worldwide challenge and addressing this challenge calls for the development of efficient absorbent materials. Here superhydrophobic/superoleophilic magnetic polyurethane (PU) sponge was fabricated via the facile dopamine self-polymerization to anchor Fe 3 O 4 nanoparticles onto the skeleton of the PU sponge, followed by the introduction of the low-surface-energy hydrophobic molecules heptadecafluoro-1, 1, 2, 2-tetrahydrodecyltrimethoxysilane (FAS-17) on the sponge surface to induce the superhydrophobic transformation. The magnetic PU sponge displays excellent superhydrophobicity and superoleophilicity, and more favorably possesses magnetic responsiveness and superior stability against corrosive solutions; It gave the outstanding separation performance under magnetic actuation not only for floating oils on water surface and heavy organic pollutants under water, but also in the more complex environments such as acidic solution (pH =1) and simulated seawater, suggesting the great potential in the practical oily wastewater treatment. The presented approach provides a facile and easily scalable solution for the design and construction of multifunctional magnetic absorbent materials with low cost for practical applications in the petro-chemical field.

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

“…Several materials, including modified PU sponges and Fe/C nanocomposites have been demonstrated to show this ability (Figure 13d,e). [41,92,106,112] Whereas, it could be foreseen that the 3D-SPMAs can only be collected by the magnetic when they adsorb a small amount of oil. If a large quantity of oil was adsorbed, the 3D-SPMAs would undergo several tens or even several hundred times weight gain.…”

“…In the first class, 3D-HMA were obtained by the post-modification of as-prepared 3D-S PMAs. [4,15,33,34,[38][39][40]44,93,104,106,113] For example, Li et al [104] have introduced octadecyl chains on the surface of as-prepared Figure 11. a) Schematic illustration of fabrication of magnetic p(AMPS) hydrogel composite and its application for removing toxic metals.…”

“…Reproduced with permission. [106] Copyright 2015, Royal Society of Chemistry. e) Macroporous Fe/C nanocomposites.…”

“…[34] To further reduce the surface energy, more hydrophobic materials such as fluoro-alkyl silane (FAS) have also been employed to obtain superhydrophobic 3D-SPMAs. [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.…”

Recent Progress of Polyurethane-Based Materials for Oil/Water Separation

“…By using this nature of dopamine, PU foam could be covalently modi¯ed by introduction of dopamine. [70][71][72][73][74] For instance, Li et al 70 inspired by the lotus leaf and mussel adhesive proteins, prepared a durable superhydrophobic PU sponge through inturn covalent modi¯cation of PU sponges with PDA, silver nanoparticles (AgNPs), and dodecyl mercaptan (DM) [ Fig. 7(A)], which could selectively separate oil and other organic pollutants from water.…”