Ku Bon-Jun, Lee Byoung-Min, Kim Dong Hyun, Mnoyan Anush, Hong Sung-Kwon, Go Kang Seok, Kwon Eun Hee, Kim Shin-Hyun, Choi Jae-Hak, Lee Kyubock
Graduate School of Energy Science and Technology, Chungnam National University, 99 Daehak-ro, Yuseong-gu, Daejeon 34134, Korea.
Department of Polymer Science and Engineering, Chungnam National University, 99 Daehak-ro, Yuseong-gu, Daejeon 34134, Korea.
ACS Appl Mater Interfaces. 2021 Mar 24;13(11):13106-13113. doi: 10.1021/acsami.0c21656. Epub 2021 Mar 15.
Oil spill rapidly destroys aquatic system and threatens humans, requiring fast and efficient remedy for removal of oil. The conventional remedy employs water-floating oil adsorbents whose volume should be large enough to accommodate all oil ingredients. Here, we suggest a new concept for efficient oil-spill remediation, which combines solar-driven evaporation of light oil components and simultaneous adsorption of heavy oil components, namely, solar-driven evaporation of oil combined with adsorption (SEOA). To design photothermal oil absorbents for the efficient SEOA, we designed carbonaceous fabrics with high photothermal heating performance and oil-adsorption capacity by carbonizing nonwoven cotton fabrics. For three model organic solvents of octane, decane, and dodecane floating on water, the fabrics, respectively, accelerated the evaporation in factors of 2.0, 4.4, and 2.3 through photothermal heating under simulated sunlight condition. For the 1.18 mm thick crude oil floating on water, 70 and 77 wt % of crude oil were evaporated within 2 and 16 h, respectively, with the photothermal fabrics, whereas only 22 and 34 wt % was evaporated in the absence of the fabrics, indicating the dramatic enhancement of oil removal by solar-driven evaporation. The remaining heavy oil components were accommodated in the pores of the fabrics, removal of which showed an additional 18 wt % reduction; that is, a total 95 wt % of the crude oil was removed. The oil-treatment capacity is as high as 110 g g, which has never been achieved with conventional oil adsorbents to the best of our knowledge. We believe that our combinatorial SEOA approach potentially contributes to minimizing the environmental disaster through a fast and efficient oil-spill remediation.
石油泄漏会迅速破坏水生系统并威胁人类，因此需要快速有效的补救措施来清除油污。传统的补救方法使用水上漂浮的吸油剂，其体积必须足够大以容纳所有油污成分。在此，我们提出了一种高效溢油修复的新概念，即将轻质油成分的太阳能驱动蒸发与重质油成分的同步吸附相结合，即太阳能驱动油蒸发与吸附（SEOA）。为了设计用于高效SEOA的光热吸油剂，我们通过碳化无纺布来设计具有高光热加热性能和吸油能力的含碳织物。对于漂浮在水上的三种辛烷、癸烷和十二烷的模型有机溶剂，在模拟阳光条件下，这些织物分别通过光热加热将蒸发速度提高了2.0、4.4和2.3倍。对于漂浮在水上的1.18毫米厚的原油，使用光热织物时，分别在2小时和16小时内蒸发了70%和77%的原油，而在没有织物的情况下仅蒸发了22%和34%，这表明太阳能驱动蒸发显著提高了油污清除率。剩余的重质油成分被容纳在织物的孔隙中，去除这些成分后又减少了18%的重量；也就是说，总共去除了95%的原油。该油处理能力高达110 g/g，据我们所知，传统吸油剂从未达到过这一水平。我们相信，我们的组合式SEOA方法有可能通过快速有效的溢油修复，最大限度地减少环境灾难。
