Mechanically robust, compressible, and photothermal silane/reduced graphene oxide modified plant fiber sponge for highly efficient cleanup of crude oil spill

Developing solar-assisted self-heating hydrophobic absorbents for efficient cleanup of viscous crude oil spills is attracting attention. However, using a simple, environment-friendly, and scalable fabrication approach to prepare solar-heating absorbent remains a big challenge. Due to the viscosity of crude oil can enormously decrease with increasing temperature, the self-heating absorbent which can in-situ raise the temperature to decrease the viscosity of crude oil shows potential application in accelerating the absorption and recovery of crude oil. Here, a hydrophobic and photothermal reduced graphene oxide and hexamethyldisilane synergistically modified plant fiber sponge (PFS@rGO@HMDS) is developed by an easy and efficient mechanical foaming strategy combined with in-situ vapor and thermal reduction treatment. The obtained PFS@rGO@HMDS exhibits good hydrophobicity (135° in water contact angle), excellent mechanical compressibility and durability, high solar absorption (>97.84 %), and oil absorptive capacity (27.3–52.0 g/g). Benefiting from the excellent photothermal conversion capacity, the surface temperature at the equilibrium of PFS@rGO@HMDS can reach 71.2 °C under 1 sun irradiation to reduce the viscosity of crude oil and realize the rapid crude oil spill remediation. The PFS@rGO@HMDS also can be used in a continual absorbent system to accomplish the ongoing and quick repair of viscous oil spills from the seawater surface, showcasing its enormous potential for use in huge-scale oil spill clean-up and recovery.