Recently, separation materials and technology research group of Xinjiang Technical Institute of Physics and Chemistry developed a simple and efficient method to fabricate scalable foam by coating siloxane on the commercial melamine foam. The process was based on the siloxane coating originated from the silanization of methyltrimethoxysilane and tetraethoxysilane, which could be easily scaled up by employing low-cost chemicals and devices (Fig. 1). The properties of the material showed that the wettability of melamine foam was changed to superhydrophobic with a water contact angle of 156° due to the presence of alkylsilane. The modified foam exhibited excellent oil/water selectivity and high oil absorption capacities of 77–163 times its own weight. The retention of absorption capacity was greater than 97% after 5000 cycles compression. These fascinating characteristics made the modified foam exceptional recyclability for commonly organic solvents and oils without obvious dissolution/swelling. Moreover, the prepared material was integrated with an apparatus to develop a prototype oil collector for the remediation of oil spills in a larger open-air environment. The devices could be readily used in a range of real-world applications, including industrial oil spill clean-up.

The research results were published in the Science of the Total Environment. The research work is supported by the project of the West Light Foundation of CAS and Tianshan Qingnian Program of Xinjiang.

Fig. 1 Preparation, properties, and application of high-performance oil-absorbing material