Chemical and Equipment-Free Strategy To Fabricate Water/Oil Separating Materials for Emergent Oil Spill Accidents

Oil spill accidents normally have two important features when considering practical cleanup strategies: (1) unexpected occurrence in any situations possibly without specific equipment and chemicals; (2) emergency to be cleaned to minimize the influences on ecosystems. To address these two practical problems regarding removal of spilt oil, we have proposed an in situ, rapid, and facile candle-soot strategy to fabricate water/oil separating materials based on superhydrophobicity/superoleophilicity. The one-step fabrication method is independent of any chemicals or equipment and can be ready for use through short smoking processes within 5 min by using raw materials available in daily life such as textiles. The as-prepared materials perform good durability for repeated separation test and high recovery rate of various oils from water/oil mixtures. This strategy provides possibility of rapid response to sudden oil spill accidents, especially in cases without any equipment or chemicals and in poor countries/areas those could hardly afford transportation and storage of expensive separating materials.