Oil Recovery from Nanoporous Media via Water Condensation

Abstract Oil–nanoporous materials interplay is ubiquitous in oil recovery from unconventional reservoirs, environmental clean‐up, and membrane technology, so there is a genuine need for novel approaches that can monitor, manipulate, and also extract the oil present in nanoporous media. Here demonstrated is a water condensation–assisted method of extracting oil from nanopores. Under cooling‐induced condensation at room conditions, distinctive droplet modes act as both decoupling and collecting elements to transport oil from the pore space toward the nanomaterial surface after water evaporation. Even the movement of the oil through the nanoporous network can be visualized by taking advantage of the interference response of visible light in a nanoporous thin‐film platform. The method and results presented in this work open different routes to exploit oil–water–nanopore interactions and enable novel perspectives for oil recovery and environmental clean‐up.