the waste polyurethane foams were recycled and used as precursors to fabricate magnetically carbonized foams which exhibited effectively oil absorption and magnetic responsive preporties through a facile approach.Polyurethane foams were firstly dipped into acrylic acid (AA) aqueous solution to be modified with PAA on the surface of their pores by using solution polymerization.Then the foams were immersed into FeCl3 aqueous solution for soaking Fe3+ until saturation.Subsequently
the composite materials were heated to 230℃ and kept at that temperatue under the protection of nitrogen for 4 h to form magnetically carbonized foams.The effects of concentrations of AA and FeCl3
and heat temperature on the performances of magnetically carbonized foams were investigated in detail.The results of optical microscopy show that the as-fabaricated foams are porous.The data of Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy depict that the foams are modified by PAA and Fe3+.X-ray diffraction patterns demonstrate that Fe3+ changes to Fe3O4 after heating.The contact angles of water on the foams increased from 80.8 to 115.4.Optimized magnetically carbonized foams can absorb oil more than 10 times of their own weight and can quickly absorb oil within 5 min.Importantly
the density of the foams are low so that they can float on the surface of water for treating oil spills.And the foams absorbing oil can be easily seperated by a magnet.The magnetically carbonized foams synthesized in this work are good candidates for oil spill absorption and oil-water seperation.