Multifunctional Polypyrrole/Mxene-Wrapped Sponge with Synergistic Solar and Joule-Heating Effect for Efficient Adsorption and All-Weather Recovery of Crude Oil

Abstract

The occurrence of offshore oil leakage can cause great economic losses and seriously destroy ecological balance. All-weather recovery of crude oil, as a strategy to ensure the faster recycling process through day and night work, has been recently considered as a novel approach for recovery of high viscosity crude oil. Here, a superhydrophobic, photothermal and electrothermal absorbent was fabricated via the self-assembly of MXene nanosheet with pyrrole (py) monomer on the polyethyleneimine (PEI)-coated melamine sponge (PMS), in-suit polymerization of polypyrrole (Ppy) and combination with polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS)-modification on MS. The designed PDMS-Ppy/MXene-wrapped PMS (PDMS-P/M1.5@PMS) attained an outstanding photothermal and electrothermal conversion efficiency, which can respectively reach up to 78.9 °C under one sun intensity (1.0 kW/m2) and 62.3 °C applied in 5 V. More importantly, the synergistic effect of photothermal/electrothermal property for PDMS-P/M1.5@PMS ensured its surface maximum temperature could be heated to 87.0 °C in 3 min. Compared with a single energy driven heating method, the optimal PDMS-P/M1.5@PMS with the help of dual energy driven achieved the higher crude oil absorption and recovery rate. This work developed a superhydrophobic and efficient absorbent that conjugated Ppy nanoparticle is integrated with MXene nanosheet for all-weather crude oil recovery, presenting a promising way for the disposal of offshore crude oil.

Keywords: Superhydrophobic, photothermal, Electrothermal, Crude Oil, absorption