A novel high-durability oxidized poly (arylene sulfide sulfone) electrospun nanofibrous membrane for direct water-oil separation

Abstract

Water-oil separation complicated fabrication procedures and low stability seriously hindered the separation membrane from using in the practical water-oil application. Here we present a novel oxidized poly (arylene sulfide sulfone) (O-PASS) nanofibrous membrane using simple electrospinning technology, which has high durability and is directly applied to water-oil separation. The results of scanning electron microscopy and capillary flow porometer show that the fiber diameters of membranes were 378 ± 37 nm and the average pore sizes were 1.81 ± 0.22 μm with narrow distribution. Furthermore, excellent hydrophobicity (139.6°) oleophilic (0°), good oil adsorption capacity (1 5 0), and high flux (623.1 L·m−2·h−1) render O-PASS nanofibrous membrane highly effective separation of water-oil. The separation efficiency of the O-PASS nanofibrous membrane is 99%. More importantly, this membrane could endure extremely harsh environments, such as strong acid (aqua regia), strong alkali (0.1 M sodium hydroxide solution), strong polarity solvent (1, 3-Dimethyl-2-imidazolidinone) for 90 days and high temperature (120 °C) for 12 h. Finally, the O-PASS nanofibrous membrane exhibits good mechanical property reaching 5.51 MPa. This study provided good chemical resistant and hydrophobic membrane that could be directly used in harsh environment for efficacious water-oil separation.