Superhydrophobic fiber felt integrated with shipborne oil recovery device for all-weather cleanup of viscous oil spills

Rapid and efficient recovery of crude oil spill is still a great challenge because of its high viscosity and limited flowability at ambient temperature. Given this dilemma, we propose a simple and fast crude oil remediation solution by loading green, low-cost and scalable superhydrophobic fiber felt onto the shipborne oil recovery device, which enables the whole process from crude oil adsorption to recovery. This fiber felt (FF) is prepared based on inexpensive and readily available softwood pulp, and then the adsorbent is endowed with excellent photo/electrical-thermal conversion properties through simple in-situ growth of polypyrrole (PPy). Its surface temperature can rapidly reach 65 °C under 1 kW·m −2 light intensity and 93 °C under the low voltage of 8 V, which makes it high-efficiency in oil spill cleanup under sunlight/low-voltage input. Importantly, combined with COMSOL simulations, the flow behavior of crude oil in the real pore channels of the material is thoroughly investigated, revealing the flow rate distribution and diffusion characteristics of crude oil in the pore channels under different thermal response conditions, which offers a theoretical basis for the adsorption of crude oil. This study integrates the easily prepared fiber felt, which has excellent oil adsorption property, with shipborne oil recovery device, solving the problem of traditional adsorbents being difficult to realize large-scale application due to complex preparation and the lack of supporting devices, and providing an efficient emergency solution for high-viscosity oil spill pollution.