Facilely Fabricated Porous Polymer Microfiber Tube Toward Continuous Oil-Water Separating

Abstract

Serious ocean oil spills have led to shocking ecological disasters and environmental crises over the past few decades. However, owing to their intermittent mode, the present oil/water separation and collection processes generally suffer from time-consuming, complicated and expensive steps. Therefore, it is urgent to propose a facile way to consecutively separate and collect oil from oil-water mix in a one-step way. Herein, via coextrusion molding, the porous polymer (high desity polyethylene (HDPE)) microfiber tube (PPMT) was facilely fabricated. It shows high porosity (76.2±4.1%), excellent oleophilicity (OCA of 0ž) and good hydrophobicity (WCA of 135ž), resulting in decent absorption capacity of various organic pollutants (in the range of 170–350 wt.%). More interestingly, it is able to consecutively separate and collect oil from following oil-water mix and avoids secondary operation (such as extra desorption), successfully achieving efficient one-step method for oil-water separating & collecting (with a separation efficiency of 97.4%±4.7% at the average flux of 0.28 ml/s). This work proposes a novel concept for preparing porous polymer tube composed of microfibrils via a low-cost, facile and effcient method, offering an innovative way to construct the functional structure following the idea of polymer “structuring” processing.