Hydrophobic surface modification and characterization of melamine foam

Superhydrophobic and oleophilic modification of commercial acoustic melamine foam (MF) was made in this study. The modification was carried out with chitosan (CHI) and silica particles (SiO₂), by using both a layer-by-layer-like approach (LbL) and dip coating technique. Subsequently, 1-octadecanethiol was used as a secondary modification agent. QCM-D, SEM, and FTIR analyses confirmed that the coating was successfully performed. After the modification, the column wall thicknesses increased than that of MF and they ranged from 25% to 48% for modified MF with an LbL-like approach (MMF) and modified MF via dip coating technique (MMFd), respectively. The sorption experiments showed that modified MFs, which had a water contact angle (WCA) above 160°, could sorb several model pollutants (vegetable oil, chloroform, ethanol, and toluene) up to 76-130 times their original weight. It had been determined that MMF protects its open-pore structure better than that of MMFd, which indicated that MF has a more uniform pore structure after modification. Furthermore, after 10 cycles of the sorption and release process, there was no significant change in sorption capacity, and they preserved their mechanical stability and flexibility.