Solar-Assisted, Highly Efficient, and In Situ Recovery of Crude Oil Spill by FeCo2S4-Modified Sponge

Rapid cleanup of oil spill is becoming a great challenge since crude oil is hard to clean up by conventional porous oil sorbents because of its high viscosity. Herein, novel fabrication of a hydrophobic/oleophilic and photothermal polydopamine (PDA)/FeCo2S4/polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) coated polyurethane (PU) sponge using chemical polymerization and dip-coating methods is reported. The optimized composite sponge exhibits high hydrophobicity, high absorption capacity for oils and organic liquids, excellent chemical resistance, and stable recycling. Furthermore, PDA/FeCo2S4/PDMS@PU sponge shows outstanding photothermal conversion capability. Under sunlight irradiation, crude oil viscosity can be reduced by two orders of magnitude due to the rapid temperature rise in PDA/FeCo2S4/PDMS@PU sponge. In addition, a method of in situ pumping for uninterrupted recovery of oil spills from the water surface is designed. Benefiting from great mechanical performance and photothermal conversion capacity, the PDA/FeCo2S4/PDMS@PU sponge can be regarded as an ideal sorbent candidate for the collection of crude oil and treatment of large-scale oil spill disasters.