Oleophilic hydrophobic magnetic porous materials

An oleophilic-hydrophobic-magnetic (OHM) porous material for recovering a hydrophobic material from a mixture, the OHM porous material comprising a porous substrate having a solid matrix defining a plurality of pores distributed through the solid matrix, the OHM porous material further comprising a coating of a nanocomposite on surfaces of the solid matrix,

• the nanocomposite comprising dimensional, layered material having nucleation sites interleaved between a plurality of layers of a multilayer stack of a plurality of layers of graphite, each graphite layer in the plurality of layers of graphite comprising multiple graphene layers and each graphite layer having nucleation sites thereon, the nanocomposite further comprising a plurality of layers of magnetic nanoparticles interleaved with the plurality of layers of graphite, wherein individual layers of magnetic nanoparticles in the plurality of layers of magnetic nanoparticles are each directly anchored on a surface of a graphite layer of the plurality of layers of graphite via the nucleation sites and individual layers of magnetic nanoparticles are each separated by a graphite layer of the plurality of layers of graphite,
• further wherein neighboring layers in the multilayer stack are held together via van der Waals forces such that the nanocomposite is free of isolated graphene layers.