Preparation And Properties Of Superhydrophobic/Oleophilic Composite Materials

With the rapid development of global industry, the demands for oil and its producions haveincreased dramatically. However, the petroleum pollution always accompany with the oilexploration and its transportation process. Consequently, collecting oil spill from water surfacehas become an urgent problem. Therefore, great efforts have been done to solve the petroleumpollution. Inspired by superhydrophobic phenomena, lots of superhydrophobic/oleophilicmaterials have been prepared, which could be used in oil/water separation. However, thesematerials have many deficiencies inculding technologically complex and high production costswhich limits their large scale commercial production. So, it is necessary to find a moreconvenient and cheaper way to prepare superhydrophobic/oleophilic materials. This dissertationmainly focuses on the preparation of superhydrophobic/oleophilic composite materials which arecontained three parts as following:1. A noval type of porous polypropylene (PP) fiber material for the separation oil/watermixed liquids has been prepared by deposition of SiO2-GO composite particles and hydrophobicsilanes on the commercially PP fiber material. The water contact angle was applied to study thehydrophobic/oleophiic of as-prepared PP fiber material at room temperature. The as-prepared PPfiber materials exhibit highly water repellency and oleophilic properties.2. In order to improve the oil absorption rate of aboved material. The polyurethane (PU)spong was used to prepare superhydrophobic/oleophilic material. Firstly, The PU sponge wasmodified by SiO2/polytetrafluorothylene (PTFE) composite particles and then was treated withhydrophobic silanes to obtain highly water repellency property. The relationship between surfacehydrophobic and surface roughness has been investigated by water contact angle testing. The oilabsorption/releasing experiment was carried out to testing its recycle using ability of as-preparedPU sponge.3. Based on our preliminary works of superhydrophobic/oleophilic PU spong, theas-prepared sponge would lose superhydrophobic property after three recycles, which due to theattractive surface forces are not strong enough to keep these particles fixed onto the network of PU sponge during the process of oil apsorption and oil releasing. Therefore, the multi-walledcarbon nanotubes (MWNTs)/SiO2composite particles were chosen to modify the PU sponge.Then, the resulting sponge was modified by hydrophobic silanes to obtain superhydrophobicfeature. The stability and recycle using ability of as-prepared sponge were investigated,emphatically.The above prepared new porous composite materials exhibit superhydrophobic andoleophilic properties. The fabrication technique of these materials is easy to grasp and to beextended, which endow a new way to clean the oil spill.