Corrosion-resistant porous hydrophobic PVDF-CBC foam for the treatment of oil-water separation

Abstract

Inspired by the natural biological structure, the superhydrophobic phenomenon has attracted the wide attention of researchers, and superhydrophobicity has been applied in bionic technology. In this study, a novel hydrophobic/underwater lipophilic carbonized bacterial cellulose-PVDF foam was prepared using polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) and bacterial cellulose (BC) as the matrix by a simple and green one-step synthesis method. This method is simple and green, does not use any toxic solvents, and solves the technical problems due to PVDF's solubility limitations. Carbonized bacterial cellulose (CBC) has a three-dimensional porosity. PVDF has the characteristics of low surface energy. We have prepared a PVDF-CBC foam that combines the advantages of CBC and PVDF, which exhibits hydrophobicity/underwater lipophilicity. The obtained porous PVDF-CBC foam has good hydrophobicity (water contact angle is 142° ± 3.2). The foam has excellent adsorption performance, and the adsorption capacity of cooking oil can reach more than 600%, and the adsorption capacity of organic solvent is up to 923%. The PVDF-CBC foam can be reused by releasing the solvent absorbed during the adsorption process in ethanol. After ten cycles, the adsorption capacity did not change much. In addition, PVDF-CBC foam exhibits excellent corrosion resistance even under harsh environmental conditions. The adsorption capacity of the foam after soaking can still reach 96.2%, which proved that the porous PVDF-CBC foam had a high potential in oil-water separation treatment and will become a reference for future work.