Speed up the absorption of viscous crude oil spill by Joule-heated sorbent design

Although ocean crude-oil spill accidents did not frequently happened in the past,it really caused great damage to the marine ecosystem once it happened.Because of the spreading and weathering,crude-oil spill usually covers a large area of water surface and its viscosity is very high,which brings human great trouble to clean it up.Dispersant and in-situ burning were frequently used in the past crude-oil spill accidents,

Although ocean crude-oil spill accidents did not frequently happened in the past, it really caused great damage to the ma- rine ecosystem once it happened. Because of the spreading and weathering, crude-oil spill usually covers a large area of water surface and its viscosity is very high, which brings hu- man great trouble to clean it up. Dispersant and in-situ burn- ing were frequently used in the past crude-oil spill accidents, but these two methods suffered from the drawbacks includ- ing being toxic to marine lives, causing air pollution, disabil- ity of recovering the crude oil. Oil skimmers could recovery the oils, but their handling capacities are rather limited. Re- cently, porous hydrophobic and oleophilic materials （PHOM） have been demonstrated as low-cost, efficient and ecofriendly materials for the oil spill cleanup [ 1 ]. Nevertheless, their poor absorption speed to viscous oil spill hinders their practical ap- plication.