Joule-heatable bird-nest-bioinspired/carbon nanotubes-modified sepiolite porous ceramics: An efficient, sturdy, and continuous strategy for oil recovery

Zhong Huang; Jun Zhang; Saisai Li; Gaoqian Yuan; Faliang Li; Yuan Zeng; Lei Han; Quanli Jia; Haijun Zhang; Shaowei Zhang

doi:10.1016/j.jhazmat.2021.125979

Joule-heatable bird-nest-bioinspired/carbon nanotubes-modified sepiolite porous ceramics: An efficient, sturdy, and continuous strategy for oil recovery

J Hazard Mater. 2021 Sep 5:417:125979. doi: 10.1016/j.jhazmat.2021.125979. Epub 2021 May 5.

Authors

Zhong Huang¹, Jun Zhang¹, Saisai Li², Gaoqian Yuan¹, Faliang Li¹, Yuan Zeng¹, Lei Han¹, Quanli Jia³, Haijun Zhang⁴, Shaowei Zhang⁵

Affiliations

¹ The State Key Laboratory of Refractories and Metallurgy, Wuhan University of Science and Technology, No. 947 Heping Rd, Wuhan 430081, China.
² Key Laboratory of Green Fabrication and Surface Technology of Advanced Metal Materials (Anhui University of Technology), Ministry of Education, Ma'anshan 243002, China.
³ Henan Key Laboratory of High Temperature Functional Ceramics, Zhengzhou University, Zhengzhou 450052, China.
⁴ The State Key Laboratory of Refractories and Metallurgy, Wuhan University of Science and Technology, No. 947 Heping Rd, Wuhan 430081, China. Electronic address: zhanghaijun@wust.edu.cn.
⁵ College of Engineering, Mathematics and Physical Sciences, University of Exeter, Stocker Rd, Exeter EX4 4QF, UK. Electronic address: s.zhang@exeter.ac.uk.

PMID: 34015716
DOI: 10.1016/j.jhazmat.2021.125979

Abstract

Oil-spill accident is a severe globally concerned environmental issue. In this work, a Joule-heatable bird-nest-bioinspired/carbon nanotubes-modified sepiolite porous ceramic (JBN/CM-SC) was developed, using inexpensive sepiolite porous ceramics as the substrate and carbon nanotubes (CNTs) derived from waste plastics as the modifier. The former exhibited outstanding mechanical property (1.7 MPa of compressive strength), gas permeability (9.1 × 10^-11 m²), thermal conductivity (0.215 W·m^-1·K^-1) and thermal/chemical stability. As expected, the deposited CNTs not only conferred a hydrophobic surface, but also resulted in a Joule-heating ability of intrinsically non-conductive ceramics. As-prepared JBN/CM-SC demonstrated a separation rate as high as 120-200 kg·s^-1·m^-2 for oil recovery and a high selectivity of over 95%. The Joule heat generated by the heated JBN/CM-SC could in-situ reduce the oil-viscosity, remarkably increasing the oil-diffusion. The separation rate was enhanced by ~12 times with respect to that of the non-heated counterpart. In addition, the idea of modular design was proposed. By simply combining JBN/CM-SC components with pipes and a pump, a continuous in-situ collection of oil from an oil/water mixture was realized, providing an efficient, sturdy, and continuous approach to recover the spilled oil in an oil-spill accident.

Keywords: Bird-nest; Carbon nanotubes; Joule-heatable; Oil recovery; Sepiolite ceramics.