Preparation and characterization of a fluorizated kaolin–modified melamine sponge as an absorbent for efficient and rapid oil/water separation

Oil spills result in severe environmental pollution and inflict serious ecological damage, which makes the development of facile, low-cost, high-capacity, and sustainable oil absorbents to be a task of high practical significance. In this study, a kaolin-modified hydrophobic melamine sponge (K-MS) was prepared via simple soaking method, which can be applied to clean up oil spills and organic solvents leaks. The properties of the K-MS were characterized by a range of instrumental techniques. The addition of fluorizated kaolin not only endowed commercially available melamine sponge hydrophobic properties and enhanced its adsorption capacity to various oils and organic solvents. The K-MS exhibited the high adsorption capacity (up to 87–194 g/g) and excellent recyclability (>90%). The equilibrium adsorption time was fast within 1 s for diesel. Moreover, the as-prepared sponge adsorption performance was examined in harsh environment, which has remarkable chemical stability and compressive properties. Thus, this study presents a low-cost facile strategy to produce promising absorbent for large-scale oil and organic solvents cleanups and recovery. Furthermore, this approach can be extended to a series of clay minerals in rich source, thus could open up new prospects for design hydrophobic materials to address oil pollution.