Carbon/MnO2-x nanofibrous membrane for superior O/W emulsions purification with robust and comprehensive-fouling mitigation

Abstract

Filtration membranes (FMs), with high separation efficiency, robust/comprehensive anti-fouling capacities, and highly anti-corrosive performance, are highly desirable for practical complex oil/water emulsions purification, but still a challenge unsolved. Herein, FM containing oxygen vacancy engineered MnO2-x nanolayer on the outer surface of carbon nanofibrous membrane has been fabricated to address this challenge. Given the existence of oxygen vacancy of the MnO2-x nanolayer, multiple functions have been realized simultaneously: (i) stronger water affinity than oils; (ii) robust anti-corrosion towards diverse corrosive media (e.g., 1M HCl, 1M NaOH, 10 wt % NaCl, N,N-dimethylformamide, and dimethyl sulfoxide); (iii) efficient degradation of organic dyes (methylene blue and rhodamine B) via photocatalytic process; (iv) comprehensive anti-fouling capacities for oils, organic dyes, bovine serum albumin, and humic acid . Consequently, our FM displays superior separation efficiencies (≥ 99.3 %) towards complex oil/water emulsions with high flux (the maximum: 41,557 ± 350 L m−2 h−1bar−1), robust and comprehensive anti-fouling capacity for different pollutants (e.g., oils, bovine serum albumin, humic acid, and organic dyes) via simple water rinse or photocatalytic degradation to 100 % recover permeation flux for 40 cycles. These outstanding functions make our FM with great potential in practically complex O/W emulsions treatments under harsh conditions.