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Facile Thermally Impacted Water‐Induced Phase Separation Approach for the Fabrication of Skin‐Free Thermoplastic Polyurethane Foam and Its Recyclable Counterpart for Oil–Water Separation
Author(s) -
Wang Xiaolong,
Pan Yamin,
Shen Changyu,
Liu Chuntai,
Liu Xianhu
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
macromolecular rapid communications
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.348
H-Index - 154
eISSN - 1521-3927
pISSN - 1022-1336
DOI - 10.1002/marc.201800635
Subject(s) - polyurethane , materials science , fabrication , thermoplastic polyurethane , separation (statistics) , phase (matter) , free water , composite material , thermoplastic , chemical engineering , polymer science , chemistry , environmental science , organic chemistry , engineering , environmental engineering , computer science , medicine , alternative medicine , pathology , elastomer , machine learning
Developing a facile large‐scale strategy to fabricate polymer foams with excellent wettability and recycling its counterpart for oil–water separation is in urgent demand. Here, a facile template‐free thermally impacted water‐induced phase separation approach for the fabrication of skin‐free thermoplastic polyurethane foam with a water contact angle of 147°, porosity more than 90%, density less than 14 mg cm −3 , and excellent compressibility (>1000 cycles) is proposed. The foams show high efficiency of oil recovery (>98%) during the squeezing and pumping oil–water separation test. Moreover, the used foams could be recycled and reused to form refresh foams without sacrificing their high performance, which makes this method a promising prospect for environmental applications.