Solar heating assisted rapid cleanup of viscous crude oil spills using reduced graphene oxide-coated sponges

The rapid cleanup of heavy crude oil spills is challenging due to the poor mobility of highly viscous oil. Traditional absorption strategies involve heating oils to a relatively high temperature to reduce their viscosity, but this method is expensive. Herein, a solar-heated reduced graphene oxide (rGO)-wrapped melamine sponge (MS) was proposed to rapidly absorb oil. The prepared rGO-MS exhibited good hydrophobicity and oleophilicity and could be used for the rapid cleanup of oil spills from water. In addition, the excellent photothermal conversion effect of rGO enabled the rGO-MS composite to achieve a solar energy absorption efficiency of 91%. Due to the localized solar energy collection and wetting properties of rGO-MS, viscous oil near the contact region was effectively heated, enabling rapid heavy oil recovery under solar light illumination. This proposed solar heating-assisted viscous oil sorbent has great promise for use in heavy oil spill cleanups in the future.