Abstract

The clean-up of spilled viscous crude oil has increasingly become a global challenge. Since the rather limited sorption speed restricted the use of traditional oil sorbents materials in practical oil-spill remediation, people gradually pay more attention to the nanoporous materials and technology to clean-up viscous crude oil by turning the rheology though Joule-heating. Herein, we report a quite easy synthesis method to prepare light-weight nanoporous carbon sponges by using the cheap environmentally friendly melamine foam, a widely used and mass disposal building material with high porosity of over 99%, as the template and carbon source. SEM images show that the natural 100 um level porous network structure of melamine foam retained after the carbonized carbon sponge material. Nitrogen adsorption-desorption isotherms as well as the corresponding pore size distribution results clearly indicating the unique hierarchical mesoporous features of the as-developed carbon sponge, which is good for its contract with the spill oil. XRD and Raman spectra verified the partial graphitization characteristics of the mesoporous carbon sponges, FT-IR and XPS spectra confirmed the presence of N and O containing functional groups. The Joule-heating performance in a simulated oil spill case under sunlight show that the obtained mesoporous carbon sponges superior than supported graphene control (MF-G) on the heating and rheological regulation effect, thus is an excellent candidate for oil spill recovery. The synthetically balanced physicochemical characteristics and additional merits such as low cost, enriched oxygen-containing functional groups, good bulk electrical conductivities and robustness make this carbon sponge material a good platform for the development of various advanced multifunctional materials for oil spill recovery.

Keywords: Carbon Sponges; Oil Spill Recovery; Hierarchical mesoporous; Graphitic Carbon

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Kang, S.; Chen, M.; Wang, Y.; Tang, F.; Cui, L.; Dong, M. Beilstein Arch. 2019, 201936. doi:10.3762/bxiv.2019.36.v1

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