Abstract
Emulsified oily wastewater threatens human health seriously, and traditional technologies are unable to separate emulsion containing small sized oil droplets. Currently, oil–water emulsions are usually separated by special wettability membranes, and researchers are devoted to developing membranes with excellent antifouling performance and high permeability. Herein, a novel, simple and low-cost method has been proposed for the separation of emulsion containing surfactants. Polyacrylonitrile (PAN) nanofibers were prepared via electrospinning and then coated by polydopamine (PDA) by using self-polymerization reactions in aqueous solutions. The morphology, structure and oil-in-water emulsion separation properties of the as-prepared PDA@PAN nanofibrous membrane were tested. The results show that PDA@PAN nanofibrous membrane has superhydrophilicity and almost no adhesion to crude oil in water, which exhibits excellent oil–water separation ability. The permeability and separation efficiency of n-hexane/water emulsion are up to 1570 Lm−2 h−1 bar−1 and 96.1%, respectively. Furthermore, after 10 cycles of separation, the permeability and separation efficiency values do not decrease significantly, indicating its good recycling performance. This research develops a new method for preparing oil–water separation membrane, which can be used for efficient oil-in-water emulsion separation.
Highlights
With an increase in oil spills and sewage discharge, water pollution has become an increasingly serious environmental problem
The surface morphology of the as-prepared PAN and PDA@PAN nanofibrous membrane were analyzed by scanning electron microscopy
The PAN electrospun nanofibrous membrane was prepared by the electrospinning method, and PDA nanoparticle coating was fabricated in situ on the surface of PAN fiber by controlling the self-polymerization of Dopamine hydrochloride (DA) through a simple and convenient impregnation method
Summary
With an increase in oil spills and sewage discharge, water pollution has become an increasingly serious environmental problem. Various conventional physical and chemical methods have been applied for removing oil from oily wastewater, such as gravity-based technologies [7], coagulations and floating [8,9], oil skimmers [10], adsorbent materials [11] and filtration [12], etc. These traditional separation methods have several disadvantages, such as high energy cost, complicated operation process and secondary pollution. It is difficult to separate emulsified oil–water mixtures by conventional methods and materials because the size of the oil droplets in the oil–water emulsion is usually less than 20 μm, and the oil droplets are stably and uniformly dispersed in water [16,17]
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