Self-Driven One-Step Oil Removal from Oil Spill on Water via Selective-Wettability Steel Mesh

Abstract

Marine oil spills seriously endanger sea ecosystems and coastal environments, resulting in a loss of energy resources. Environmental and economic demands emphasize the need for new methods of effectively separating oil-water mixtures, while collecting oil content at the same time. A new surface-tension-driven, gravity-assisted, one-step, oil-water separation method is presented for sustained filtration and collection of oil from a floating spill. A benchtop prototype oil collection device uses selective-wettability (superhydrophobic and superoleophilic) stainless steel mesh that attracts the floating oil, simultaneously separating it from water and collecting it in a container, requiring no preseparation pumping or pouring. The collection efficiencies for oils with wide ranging kinematic viscosities (0.32-70.4 cSt at 40 °C) are above 94%, including motor oil and heavy mineral oil. The prototype device showed high stability and functionality over repeated use, and can be easily scaled for efficient cleanup of large oil spills on seawater. In addition, a brief consolidation of separation requirements for oil-water mixtures of various oil densities is presented to demonstrate the versatility of the material system developed herein.

Recent Development of Advanced Materials with Special Wettability for Selective Oil/Water Separation

“…Similar designs for such self-driven oil/water separations were also demonstrated using other superhydrophobic metal meshes. [ 17,29 ] These simple but creative designs may enable the in situ cleanup of an oil spill at sea.…”

One-step electrodeposition of a self-cleaning and corrosion resistant Ni/WS2superhydrophobic surface

“…Research and develop-ment subject areas related to superhydrophobicity include anti-corrosion, 1,2 antifouling, 3 anti-icing, 4 selfcleaning, 1, 5 oil-water separation, 6 friction reduction, 7 and energy saving. 7,8 Many methods have been successfully applied to fabricate superhydrophobic surfaces, including etching, lithography, airless and solvent spraying, chemical vapour deposition, solgel synthesis, surface oxidation and a variety of templating.…”

A Robust Cu(OH)2 Nanoneedles Mesh with Tunable Wettability for Nonaqueous Multiphase Liquid Separation

“…Among various liquids separation methods, membrane technique is regarded as a low-cost, effective, and environment friendly choice that has drawn considerable interest in last decade. Since the idea of taking the special wettability surface into the application of oil/water separation was proposed, [ 1 ] the researchers have prepared a large number of materials for the separation of oil/water mixtures.[ 2-6 ] Such as nanofi ber textile, [7][8][9][10] 3D porous foams, [11][12][13][14][15][16] and mesh [17][18][19][20][21] were frequently used to achieve water/oil separation. Nonetheless, water/oil separation system cannot satisfy the complex liquid mixture requirement during real industry processes.…”