The extensive reliance on petroleum-derived products, coupled with marine oil spills, continues to exert profound and detrimental effects on aquatic ecosystems and public health. Among various remediation strategies, adsorption-based techniques have emerged as a primary approach for the practical management of crude oil spills. Compared to conventional methods, advanced oil sorbents offer distinct advantages, including cost-effectiveness, environmental sustainability, and superior hydrophobic-oleophilic behaviour, enabling efficient oil uptake from seawater. However, their performance is significantly impeded when confronted with highly viscous crude oil, which hampers oil-water separation and restricts diffusion into the internal porous network of the sorbent matrix, thereby compromising sorption efficacy. To address this critical limitation, photothermal materials have been innovatively engineered to exploit localized in-situ heating via photothermal conversion phenomenon, effectively lowering oil viscosity and facilitating deeper oil penetration into the sorbent architecture. This systemic article provides an understanding of the recent advancements in photothermal nanohybrid sponge-based sorbents—encompassing carbon, sulfide-based, polymer/MXene composites, and nanofluid-modified photothermal systems—for marine oil spill cleanup. Reported oil absorption capabilities of various systems vary from ⁓9 g g⁻1 for halloysite-PDMS sponges to exceedingly high values exceeding 100 g g⁻1 for rGO/CNT/FRMS architectures, while MXene/Fe3O4-PDMS composite demonstrate absorption more than 27 times their own weight within minutes. The review elucidates the structural attributes and fabrication methodologies of these materials, offering insights into their oil-removal mechanisms driven by photothermal conversion coupled with oil-water separation via wettability tuning. In addition, the review sufficiently evaluates the parameters influencing the sorption capacity, alongside considerations of material stability, reusability, and environmental compatibility. The study concludes by highlighting the unsolved challenges and outlining prospective research directions aimed at advancing next-generation sorbent technologies for large-scale oceanic oil spill remediation. It is envisioned that this article will stimulate further interdisciplinary research and accelerate the development of high-performance photothermal sponges for environmental remediation.

Research Advances in Nanostructured Photothermal Sponges for Sustainable Oil Spill Remediation

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发表日期：

2026年5月4日

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Bagmita Das,
Saptarshi Roy,
Md. Ahmaruzzaman

摘要

The extensive reliance on petroleum-derived products, coupled with marine oil spills, continues to exert profound and detrimental effects on aquatic ecosystems and public health. Among various remediation strategies, adsorption-based techniques have emerged as a primary approach for the practical management of crude oil spills. Compared to conventional methods, advanced oil sorbents offer distinct advantages, including cost-effectiveness, environmental sustainability, and superior hydrophobic-oleophilic behaviour, enabling efficient oil uptake from seawater. However, their performance is significantly impeded when confronted with highly viscous crude oil, which hampers oil-water separation and restricts diffusion into the internal porous network of the sorbent matrix, thereby compromising sorption efficacy. To address this critical limitation, photothermal materials have been innovatively engineered to exploit localized in-situ heating via photothermal conversion phenomenon, effectively lowering oil viscosity and facilitating deeper oil penetration into the sorbent architecture. This systemic article provides an understanding of the recent advancements in photothermal nanohybrid sponge-based sorbents—encompassing carbon, sulfide-based, polymer/MXene composites, and nanofluid-modified photothermal systems—for marine oil spill cleanup. Reported oil absorption capabilities of various systems vary from ⁓9 g g⁻¹ for halloysite-PDMS sponges to exceedingly high values exceeding 100 g g⁻¹ for rGO/CNT/FRMS architectures, while MXene/Fe₃O₄-PDMS composite demonstrate absorption more than 27 times their own weight within minutes. The review elucidates the structural attributes and fabrication methodologies of these materials, offering insights into their oil-removal mechanisms driven by photothermal conversion coupled with oil-water separation via wettability tuning. In addition, the review sufficiently evaluates the parameters influencing the sorption capacity, alongside considerations of material stability, reusability, and environmental compatibility. The study concludes by highlighting the unsolved challenges and outlining prospective research directions aimed at advancing next-generation sorbent technologies for large-scale oceanic oil spill remediation. It is envisioned that this article will stimulate further interdisciplinary research and accelerate the development of high-performance photothermal sponges for environmental remediation.