Superhydrophobic polyurethane foam based on castor oil and lignin with SiC nanoparticles for efficient and recyclable oil-water separation

Superhydrophobic polyurethane foam has great potential to be used as adsorbent for cleaning up oil spills. In this study, lignin and castor oil were used as alternative resources to petroleum -based raw materials for the production of degradable polyurethane foams for oil spill treatment. SiC was first modified by 1H, 1H, 2H, 2H-perfluorododecyltrichlorosilane (FDTS) to obtain F-SiC. F-SiC was superhydrophobicity with an irregular crystalline structure of diameters ranging from 20 to 500 nm. It was incorporated into the matrix of lignin and castor oil derived polyurethane foam. With the addition of F-SiC, the water contact angle of the foam increased to 151.7 C to render the foam superhydrophobic. After 100 cycles of mechanical compression, the foam showed a good elastic recovery ability. It is shown in SEM that F-SiC was distributed on the foam skeleton. Under 1 KW/m(2) sunlight intensity, the temperature of the foam went up to 88.8 C-degrees. On top of that, the foam showed excellent self-cleaning and oil -absorbing properties. It degraded within 4 h in alkaline solutions. Therefore, these castor oil and lignin derived bio-based polyurethane foams possess good mechanical stability, fast oil absorption, and alkaline degradability which has good application prospects in oil spill cleanup.