Concus Finn Capillary driven fast viscous oil-spills removal by superhydrophobic cruciate polyester fibers

Developing functional materials integrating multi-tasking oil/water separation performances is significant but challenging for the remediation of large-scale oil spills causing pernicious environmental damages. Herein, a novel Concus Finn Capillary driven oil sorbent (OSCPF) fabricated by aligning superhydrophobic cruciate polyester fibers based on yarn spinning mechanism is designed to realize the clean-up of oil spills and various oil/ water mixtures at high speeds. Instantaneous oil diffusion is achieved by abrupt Concus Finn Capillary driven oilflows along aligned channels. This advance reduces the penetrating time for viscous crude oils by 95.00% comparing with that of non-oriented circular polyester fibers. The OSCPF possess great oil sorption capacity of 54.36-124.71 g/g and can separate oils from immiscible oil/water mixtures, including seawater, soap-water, CuCl2-water, and KMnO4-water, and surfactant-stabilized O/W emulsions by the way of adsorption with satisfactory separation efficiency (99.41-99.83%). Especially, the OSCPF is effectively used to enclose oil spills to prevent rapid oil diffusion and in-situ continuously collect the spillages from water surface and underwater by pumping device with recovery rates of 15,727-104,227 L & sdot;m- 2 & sdot;h- 1. Considering the unique structural design, fast oil sorption speed, and low operating cost, this work provides a prospective oil remover addressing the remediation of catastrophic multi-tasking oil/water pollutions.

Automated summary

This study developed a novel Concus Finn Capillary driven oil sorbent, which effectively separates oil and water by aligning superhydrophobic cruciate polyester fibers and demonstrated high separation efficiency.