Marvelous oleophillic adsorption ability of SiO2/activated carbon and GO composite nanostructure using polyurethane for rapid oil spill cleanup

An economical, accessible and facile method was implemented for the synthesis of silica (SiO2) and SiO2-based hierarchical structures to improve the sorption efficiency via providing surface roughness, porous structure and increased active sites for adsorption process, aiming to attract petrol, diesel and mustard oil from aqueous solution. As synthesized materials were characterized by powder X-ray diffractometer (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDX). The results showed that the composites were amorphous with the expected elemental composition and surface roughness. Absence of hydroxyl groups in FTIR spectra confirms the hydrophobic nature of composites. SiO2-based di and tri-composite were firmly anchored onto the skeleton of polyurethane (PU) sponges for adsorption application. PU sponges decorated with ternary composite (AC/GO-SiO2) exhibited marvelous sorption capacity for removal of adsorbates from oil-water mixture. This can be attributed towards the surface roughness and morphological defects which provides high surface area and active sites to reside maximum oil contents. These modified PU sponges could be recycled up to five cycles to reuse without losing the sorption capacity. Using this simple and in-expensive approach, this work could be extended to design novel SiO2-based sorbent materials with other variant functionalities over large-scale oily water treatment.

Automated summary

An economical and facile method was used to synthesize SiO2-based hierarchical structures for improved sorption efficiency, successfully attracting petrol, diesel, and mustard oil from aqueous solution. The modified PU sponges decorated with ternary composite exhibited high sorption capacity for removal of adsorbates from oil-water mixture and could be recycled up to five cycles without losing sorption capacity, showing potential for large-scale oily water treatment.