Water resource is a prerequisite for the survival of human beings with a self-evident importance. In recent years, water environment continues to deteriorate and water pollution is becoming more and more severe, oil spillages and indiscriminate discharge of organic pollutants cause serious and irrecoverable damages to environment and ecosystems, and the way for effective separation of oil-water mixture is becoming an urgent problem. The frequently-used methods for oil/water separation are physical adsorption, chemical dispersion and biodegradation, in which chemical adsorption and biodegradation methods usually cause secondary pollution to the marine environment; and the physical adsorption material has the advantages of easily collection, pollution-free and so on. This article summarizes the research status of physical filtration and physical adsorption materials for oil/water separation, some related difficulties that remain to be solved are pointed out and its future researching focus and developing directions are proposed.