Abstract
Nowadays, global shortage of both water and energy makes it vital to develop innovative technologies such as photothermal membrane distillation (PMD) that harvests solar energy for water desalination. Herein, a single-step, facile and scalable technique was employed to create a photothermal omniphobic membrane (POM) for long-term vacuum membrane distillation (VMD). Poly(vinylidene fluoride) (PVDF) electrospun membrane was coated with an omniphobic layer made of poly(1H, 1H, 2H, 2H-perfluorooctyl acrylate) containing varying concentrations of photothermal carbon black nanoparticles (CB NPs) (0, 0.5, 1.0, 2.5 and 5.0 wt%). The prepared POM exhibited strong ability to retain droplets of isopropanol, engine oil and water with contact angles of 113.69°, 127.95° and 150.54°, respectively. The permeate flux through the POM containing 5 wt% CB NPs under 1 sun solar simulator light was 2.5 times higher than that of the pristine PVDF membrane without photothermal activity. Outstanding long-term performance of the prepared POM was verified by conducting VMD to desalinate a saline feed solution containing sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS) with varying concentrations ranging from 0.2 to 0.8 mM. Overall, it can be concluded that the POM prepared in this work can pave the way for the development of PMD systems with long-term stable performance using solar energy.
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