Abstract Absorbing materials with high hydrophobicity, porosity and mechanical resilience are urgently needed for oil/water separation. In this work, three dimensional (3D) porous thermoplastic polyurethane-based (TPU) composite monoliths with hierarchical porous structure were prepared by a feasible thermally induced phase separation (TIPS) method. The morphology analysis revealed the hierarchical porous structure was effectively perfected by adding 2 wt% carboxyl multiwalled carbon nanotubes (cMWNTs), which showed a uniform dispersion and compatibility in TPU skeleton. As a result, the hydrophobicity (151°), saturated adsorption capacity (6.9–42.3 g g−1) and mechanical compression and resilience property of TPU/cMWNTs monolith were improved significantly when comparing to pure monolith. Moreover, the composite monolith could maintain stable hydrophobicity and absorption capacity in corrosive environment. Besides, arising from the excellent mechanical elasticity, the monolith can be easily reused by absorbing-squeezing cycles. The recycled monolith can maintain high separation efficiency of 98.4% even reusing 40 cycles. As a kind of highly efficient absorbent, porous TPU/cMWNTs monolith shows great prospect in the application of large-scale oil/water separation.

中文翻译：

---

用于持久油/水分离的超疏水和超弹性热塑性聚氨酯/多壁碳纳米管多孔整料

摘要 油水分离迫切需要具有高疏水性、孔隙率和机械弹性的吸收材料。在这项工作中，通过可行的热致相分离 (TIPS) 方法制备了具有分层多孔结构的三维 (3D) 多孔热塑性聚氨酯基 (TPU) 复合整料。形态分析表明，通过添加 2 wt% 的羧基多壁碳纳米管 (cMWNTs) 有效地完善了分级多孔结构，其在 TPU 骨架中表现出均匀的分散性和相容性。结果，与纯整料相比，TPU/cMWNTs整料的疏水性（151°）、饱和吸附容量（6.9-42.3 g g-1）以及机械压缩和回弹性能显着提高。而且，复合整料可在腐蚀环境中保持稳定的疏水性和吸收能力。此外，由于优异的机械弹性，整料可以很容易地通过吸收-挤压循环重复使用。回收的整料即使重复使用40次也能保持98.4%的高分离效率。作为一种高效吸收剂，多孔TPU/cMWNTs整料在大规模油水分离应用中显示出广阔的应用前景。