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RESEARCH ARTICLE

An unusual superhydrophilic/superoleophobic sponge for oil–water separation Jingwei LU1, Xiaotao ZHU (✉)1, Xiao MIAO2, Bo WANG1, Yuanming SONG1, Guina REN (✉)1, and Xiangming LI1 1 School of Environmental and Materials Engineering, Yantai University, Yantai 264405, China 2 Shandong Key Laboratory of Optical Communication Science and Technology, School of Physics Science and Information Technology, Liaocheng University, Liaocheng 252000, China

© Higher Education Press 2020

ABSTRACT: Development of porous materials with anti-fouling and remote controllability is highly desired for oil-water separation application yet still challenging. Herein, to address this challenge, a sponge with unusual superhydrophilicity/superoleophobicity and magnetic property was fabricated through a dip-coating process. To exploit its superhydrophilic/superoleophobic property, the obtained sponge was used as a reusable water sorbent scaffold to collect water from bulk oils without absorbing any oil. Owing to its magnetic property, the sponge was manipulated remotely by a magnet without touching it directly during the whole water collection process, which could potentially lower the cost of the water collection process. Apart from acting as a water-absorbing material, the sponge can also be used as affiliation material to separate water from oil-water mixture and oil in water emulsion selectively, when fixed into a cone funnel. This research provides a key addition to the field of oil-water separation materials. KEYWORDS: superhydrophilicity; superoleophobicity; oil–water separation; sponge; water collection; anti-fouling property

Contents 1 Introduction 2 Materials and methods 2.1 Materials 2.2 Fabrication of magnetically superhydrophilic/ superoleophobic sponge 2.3 Characterization 3 Results and discussion 3.1 Surface morphology and chemistry analysis 3.2 Surface wettability analysis 3.3 Durability of sponge Received June 2, 2020; accepted July 7, 2020 E-mails: [email protected] (X.Z.), [email protected] (G.R.)

3.4

Acting as a sorbent scaffold to collect water from bulk oils 3.5 Acting as a separation membrane for oil–water separation 4 Conclusions Disclosure of potential conflicts of interests Acknowledgements Appendix References Supplementary information

1

Introduction

Incredibly large volumes of oil–water mixtures are produced worldwide in a wide variety of industries,

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Front. Mater. Sci.

which are particularly difficult and expensive to separate [1–4]. The large volumes of contaminated mixtures necessitate the development of durable and cost-effective means to separate oil–water mixtures selectively and quickly. Methods based on porous materials with selective wettability are now gaining increased attention due to their energy efficiency, versatility in treating a variety of industrial waste streams, and consistent performance [5– 7]. To demonstrate an opposite wettability between water and oil, porous materials, such as textile, mesh and sponge, can be used to separate oil–water mixtures [5]. Various groups