Photothermal and Joule heating-assisted thermal management sponge for efficient cleanup of highly viscous crude oil

Solar-assisted isotropically thermoconductive sponge for highly viscous crude oil spill remediation

“…0.6 g of the PB obtained in the previous step was added to 200 mL of deionized water, and stirred for 30 min at low temperature. The PPB was obtained by aggregating PPy on PB according to the method mentioned in the previous work (Wu et al, 2021). Finally, the composition was washed and dried for further usage.…”

“…After 500 cycles of compression and release, there is no plastic deformation can be observed on the PPB@PU sponge, and the strength has no obvious attenuation, only 8.8% stress loss due to shrinkage, which highlights the structural stability (Figure S13B). In addition, due to the excellent mechanical properties of commercial sponges, the compression recovery ability of the PPB@PU sponges is much greater than that of other similar works such as biomass substrates or aerogels (Figure S13C) (Cai et al, 2020;Chao et al, 2020;Wang et al, 2019;Wu et al, 2020Wu et al, , 2021. The adsorption quality of the PPB@PU was not significantly attenuated during the cycle of 20 adsorptionrelease-resorption of edible oil (Figure 3H).…”

“…Based on the above problems, we adopted a two-step strategy to prepare an isotropically thermoconductive conductive polyurethane (PU) sponge with desirable compressibility and high hydrophobicity for rapid crude oil cleaning and enhanced oil recovery. According to our previous studies (Wu et al, 2021), the polymer photothermal material polypyrrole (PPy) was first anchored on the BNNS by polydopamine (PDA) to obtain the composite filler PPy-PDA/BN (PPB) with excellent photothermal conversion effect and high thermal conductivity. Then the polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) was used as a binder to adhere PPB to the sponge skeleton, a robust sponge with enhanced light absorption and thermal conductivity was prepared successfully.…”

“…Satisfactorily, reducing the viscosity of crude oil by heating is a promising strategy to address this problem (Luo and Gu, 2007). Recently, heatable porous materials have been designed to decrease viscosity, improve fluidity, and then increase the adsorption rate of crude oil (Chang et al, 2018;Chao et al, 2020;Ge et al, 2017;Gong et al, 2020;Kuang et al, 2019;Wang et al, 2019;Wu et al, 2019Wu et al, , 2020Wu et al, , 2021. Rapidly increase the temperature of the adsorbent through electric heating and photothermal conversion, thereby improving the recovery efficiency of crude oil.…”

Funnel-Shaped Floating Vessel Oil Skimmer with Joule Heating Sorption Functionality

“…Desired characteristics of state-of-the-art oil/water separation materials include lightweight with high oil sorption capacities, super-hydrophobicity, durability, reusability, low cost, and facile fabrication [ 7 ]. Advanced sorbent materials have also been developed to include unique functionalities including resistance to ultrahigh temperatures for in-situ oil burn-off from the sorbent [ 8 ], magnetism to facilitate sorbent recovery via magnets [ 9 , 10 ], and stimuli-responses such as resistive heating (Joule heating) and photothermal effect for viscous oil absorption [ 11 , 12 , 13 ]. Joule heating a semiconductive sorbent material is arguably the most applicable and versatile of these advanced sorbent features to heat and lower the viscosity of nearby oils to facilitate rapid absorption of highly viscous pollutants.…”