Ultralight graphene/carbon nanofibers/carbon nanotubes aerogels with thermal insulating and hot-oil adsorption performance

In this work, we design a novel ultra-light graphene/carbon nanofibers/carbon nanotube aerogels (GCNAs) with excellent thermal insulating and hot oil adsorption ability. The GCNAs is prepared by a facile freeze-drying method followed by post-carbonization treatment. The morphologies, compression property and oil adsorption ability of as-prepared GCNA at different temperatures are analyzed. The results show the density of GCNAs is below 3.2 mg/cm3 and present a stable porous morphology at 300 °C. Notably, the GCNAs shows high adsorption ratio (> 27300%) toward hot engine oil (200 °C). Finally, we demonstrate an application of as-prepared GCNAs to put out ethanol continuous spill fires. The ethanol was ignited immediately after being released from syringe needle. We observed that the spill fire growth with fuel spreading, and the transition to extinction. When we place GCNAs into the surrounding leakage site to stop the flow of oil, spill fire stop spread and steady in situ burning, because of the efficient adsorption of hot oil. We strongly believe that this GCNAs will provide a new promising way for the future controlling of oil-flowing fire in airplanes and avoid the possible secondary disaster.