Preparation of biomass carbon/polyurethane foams for selective oil/water absorption

Although the preparation of polyurethane foam (PUF) composites for oil absorption have attracted increasing research attention, the preparation process of PUF composites are still a thorny problem due to the nonrenewable raw materials. Proposed herein is an environmentally friendly method to prepare the biomass carbon/PUF composites. In this proposal, the biomass carbon with superhydrophobicity was prepared by using the cellulose of bamboo as precursors. Then, the biomass carbon/PUF composites were synthesized using one step foaming technology using the biomass carbon as modifier. This facile synthesis technique has the advantages of scalable fabrication of porous PUF composite for versatile water–oil separation. The PUF composites are mainly composed of hollow microspheres with holes on their surfaces. The PUF composite show very high efficiency in oil separation and quickly absorb edible oil from the glass surface and heavy oils under water. The resulting PUF composites exhibited high oil absorption capacities in the range from 8.59 to 37.10 times of their own weight for various organic solvents. Importantly, recovery oils absorption for PUF composites was obtained for 5 consecutive cycles without a significant decrease in the oil absorption properties. This study suggests potential environmental advantage in using biomass materials in improving the oil absorption properties of oil-absorbing resin for recovering oils from oily wastewater.