Superhydrophobic cotton fabrics for efficient separation of solutions/oils of various corrosiveness and temperatures and removable “wrap-around” suction unit for oil spill adsorption

Abstract

In fact, in the face of efficient recovery of oil spills at sea and the increasingly serious problem of oilfield wastewater, there is no environmentally friendly, economical, simple and mature technical solution, and efficient oil-water separation technology has not yet been fully realised. In this paper, a simple strategy of loading ferric tetroxide (Fe₃O₄)/zirconium dioxide (ZrO₂) nanoparticles on the surface of fabrics or sponges is proposed to successfully prepare superhydrophobic materials (FZ-3-PDMS-CF/PU). It showed excellent performance in the selective separation of water and heavy/light oil. Superhydrophobic fabrics exhibited ultra-high separation efficiency (99.9 %) and good permeate flux (3440 ± 68 L·m⁻²·h⁻¹) for water/trichloromethane mixtures during oil removal. Meanwhile, the FZ-3-PDMS-CF showed excellent separation effect (>98 %) for all kinds of corrosive solutions/oils as well as different temperature solution/oil mixtures. The energy-saving gravity-driven separation method is used throughout the process, providing a strong competitive path for the separation of light/heavy oil-water mixtures. Notably, “wraparound” fabric-sponge-fabric micro-absorbent devices with double-layer protection and mobility offer options for recovering oil spills at sea.