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Superhydrophobic reduced graphene oxide@poly(lactic acid) foam with electrothermal effect for fast separation of viscous crude oil

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Abstract

In recent years, eco-friendly superhydrophobic materials have aroused much attention. Herein, biodegradable poly(lactic acid) (PLA) was selected as basic material to fabricate superhydrophobic foam with electrothermal effect by dip-coating graphene oxide (GO) on the surface of PLA foam constructed through freeze-drying process and the subsequent reduction with hydroiodic acid. Owing to the micro-nano rough structure of pristine PLA foam and the coverage of low-surface-energy reduced GO (rGO), the obtained rGO@PLA foam exhibited excellent water repellency with a high water contact angle of 150.6°. The foam was able to separate different oil–water mixtures, and the separation efficiencies were all above 96%. Importantly, the rGO layer also endowed the PLA foam with electrothermal conversion capability, and the surface temperature of the rGO@PLA foam rapidly increased to 129.5 °C from 30.8 °C at a low voltage of 15 V within only 120 s. By means of the generated Joule heat, the rGO@PLA foam was successfully applied for separating viscous crude oil from water, and the separation rate was about 14 times higher than that without voltage. Our findings conceivably stand out as a new tool to fabricate functional biodegradable materials for clean-up of viscous crude oil.

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Acknowledgements

The work was financially supported by the Natural Science Foundation of Guangdong Province, China (2018A030313884)

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. The Key Laboratory of Synthetic and Biological Colloids, Ministry of Education, Jiangnan University, Wuxi, 214122, China

    Qingtao Zeng & Piming Ma

  2. School of Materials Science and Engineering, Key Lab of Guangdong Province for High Property and Functional Polymer Materials, South China University of Technology, Guangzhou, 510640, China

    Qingtao Zeng, Dehui Lai, Xuejun Lai, **ngrong Zeng & Hongqiang Li

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Zeng, Q., Ma, P., Lai, D. et al. Superhydrophobic reduced graphene oxide@poly(lactic acid) foam with electrothermal effect for fast separation of viscous crude oil. J Mater Sci 56, 11266–11277 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10853-021-06029-3

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