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Oil-polluted water purification via the carbon-nanotubes-doped organohydrogel platform

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Abstract

Solar-driven evaporators are promising for tackling freshwater scarcity but still challenged in simultaneously realizing comprehensive performances at one platform for sustainable and efficient application in real-world environments, such as stable-floating, scalability, salt-resistance, efficient vaporization, and anti-oil-fouling property. Herein, we design a hybrid organohydrogel evaporator to achieve the enduring oil contamination repulsion with maintaining accelerated evaporation process, and integrate capacities of ultra-stable floating, hindered salt-crystallization, large-scale fabrication for practical purification of seawater and polluted solutions. The raised water surface surrounding evaporators, induced by low density of organogel-phase, results in oil contamination resistance through the lateral capillary repulsion effect. Meanwhile, the organogel-phase containing photo-thermal carbon-nanotubes with low thermal capacity and conduction can form locally confined hot dots under solar irradiation and reduce heat dissipation on heating excessive water. Therefore, based on this approach, accelerated long-term practical purification of oil-contaminated solutions without any extra disposal is realized. Considering other properties of ultra-stable floating, large-scale fabrication, and anti-salt crystallization, these innovative organohydrogel evaporators open pathways for purifying oil-slick-polluted water via interfacial evaporation and are anticipated accelerating industrialization of efficient and sustainable solar-driven water purification.

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Acknowledgements

The authors acknowledge the finical support from the National Key R&D Program of China (Nos. 2018YFA0209500 and 2019YFA0709300), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 21621091, 21972155, 21975209, 22005255, 22035008, and 52025132), Projects of International Cooperation and Exchanges NSFC (No. 1A1111KYSB20200010), and National Program for Special Support of Eminent Professionals and the Fundamental Research Funds for Central Universities (No. 20720190037).

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Author notes

  1. Xuetao Xu and Xizi Wan contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. CAS Key Laboratory of Bio-inspired Materials and Interfacial Science, Technical Institute of Physics and Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100190, China

    Xuetao Xu, Xizi Wan, Haonan Li, Yikai Zhang & Shutao Wang

  2. College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Xiamen University, Xiamen, 361005, China

    Wen He, Shuli Wang & Xu Hou

  3. College of Materials, Xiamen University, Xiamen, 361005, China

    Miao Wang

  4. College of Physical Science and Technology, Xiamen University, Xiamen, 361005, China

    Xu Hou

  5. University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, China

    Xuetao Xu, Haonan Li, Yikai Zhang & Shutao Wang

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  1. Xuetao Xu
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  2. Xizi Wan
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  3. Haonan Li
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  7. Miao Wang
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Correspondence to Miao Wang, Xu Hou or Shutao Wang.

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Xu, X., Wan, X., Li, H. et al. Oil-polluted water purification via the carbon-nanotubes-doped organohydrogel platform. Nano Res. 15, 5653–5662 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-022-4118-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-022-4118-8

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