A sustainable strategy for remediation of oily sewage: Clean and safe

Sustainable and economically feasible treatment on oily sewage is of great significance. Herein, the benzoxazine monomer (C-fa) derived from renewable feedstock was facilely in-situ polymerized on the skeleton of melamine sponge (MS), accompanied with SiO 2 nanoparticles (NPs). Due to the robust hydrophobicity of poly(C-fa) and the as constructed nano-micro hierarchical structure, the as-fabricated porous composite (PBZ-SiO 2 -MS) showed wide applicability in oily sewage remediation, including selective absorption of layered oil/water mixture, separation of surfactant stabilized W/O and O/W emulsion with ultrahigh separation efficiency (higher than 99.9%) and satisfactory permeation flux (1300 L m −2  h −1 ). In addition, the remarkable flame retardancy of polybenzoxazine and MS, as well as its high absorption speed and capacity, endowed PBZ-SiO 2 -MSs with great ability to confine the flame range and prevent the potential explosion when spilled oil is ignited. This easy fabricated, low cost and versatile PBZ-SiO 2 -MSs illustrated an ingenious example of the integration of the high material performance and green chemistry concept.