Graphene Nanofibrous Foam Designed as an Efficient Oil Absorbent

Organic pollution is considered as a long-term, urgent global issue for energy, environmental, and ecological applications. Carbon-based materials have shown great potential in addressing this global issue. However, development of low-cost and high-performance of carbon-based three-dimensional materials has also proven to challenging for removal of organic pollutants from water. Here, we developed a new technique combining a liquid-assisted electrospinning and interface self-assembly of graphene to successfully fabricate novel graphene fluffy nanofibrous scaffold (GFNs) as an efficient organic pollution absorbent. The resultant GFNs with several advantages of distinctive 3D fluffy macro-structure, super porosity, low density, strong mechanical stability, and super hydrophobicity/oleophicity, demonstrated high adsorption capacity for organic solvents (201 times their own weight) and oils (119 times their own weight), as well as excellent recyclability by simple extrusion. Different from conventional graphene sponges that require a high content of graphene for complex fabrication, the preparation of GFNs only used a very small amount of graphene (1.0 mg/cm3) to achieve comparable or even better adsorption capacity and recyclability. Because of the viable synthesis method, GFNs with unique advantages and superior performance show great potential for industrial applications in environmental protections such as oil pollution cleanup and wastewater treatment.