One-step environment-friendly process to design fire-resistant superhydrophobic carbon felts with excellent durability and oil–water separation performance

Nowadays, it has become an imminent challenge of developing a robust and efficient oil/organic solvent absorbing/releasing along with oil–water separating material. Herein, a simple and environment-friendly one-step immersion method is developed for fabricating superhydrophobic carbon felts with extraordinary properties. The as-prepared superhydrophobic carbon felts reveal outstanding durability and stability even exposed to various harsh environments, such as acid, base, salt, organic solvent, and UV light for quite long time. The superhydrophobic carbon felts exhibit excellent fire resistance, and the materials can stand at least 5 times of ethanol-soaking and burning without marked influencing on the superhydrophobicity. Meanwhile, the resultant materials reveal outstanding oil adsorption and oil–water separation performance. The superhydrophobic carbon felt can still absorb 7 times its own mass of cooking oil even after 10 extrusion cycles. Moreover, the oil–water separation efficiency can still reach 98.85% after 10 times of separation. Consequently, the materials can be used in oil/organic solvent collection and oil–water separation successfully. Therefore, the simple, environment-friendly, cost-effective fabrication method together with the extraordinary durability and stability, excellent and efficient performance will find its potential applications in industrial production and environmental remediation. Graphical abstract A simple and environment-friendly one-step immersion method for fabricating superhydrophobic carbon felts is developed. The as-prepared superhydrophobic carbon felts reveal excellent fire resistance along with extraordinary durability and stability upon various harsh environments. Furthermore, the superhydrophobic carbon felts exhibit outstanding oil/organic solvent adsorption/releasing and oil–water separation performance.