Abstract
Polysulfone (PSF)/fluorinated ethylene propylene (FEP) mixed matrix membranes (MMMs) with super hydrophobic surface were successfully fabricated via non-solvent induced phase separation (NIPS) method. The effects of FEP content on the morphology, roughness, wettability, pore size, and mechanical property of PSF/FEP MMMs were characterized by scanning electron microscope, confocal microscopy, contact angle goniometer, mercury porosimetry, and tensile testing instrument, respectively. When the FEP content was 9 wt%, the average roughness of M-4 reached 0.712 μm. Meanwhile, the water contact angle (CA) and the water sliding angle (SA) was 153.3° and 6.1°, respectively. M-4 showed super hydrophobicity with a micro- and nanoscale structure surface. Then, M-4 was used for separating of water-in-oil emulsion, showing high separation efficiency for water-in-kerosene and water-in-diesel emulsions of 99.79% and 99.47%, respectively. The flux and separation efficiency changed slightly after 10 cycles. Therefore, this study indicated that the obtained PSF/FEP MMM with super hydrophobic surface could be used for efficient water-in-oil emulsion separation.
Highlights
Environmental pollution has got increasingly serious with the rapid expansion of industrialization
Where, W1 is the weight of the wet membrane, W2 is the weight of the dry membrane, D1 is the n-butyl alcohol density, and D2 is the density of PSF/FEP matrix membranes (MMMs)
As described in Wenzel equation,[41] it could be known that the surface roughness was a key factor for super hydrophobic surface
Summary
Environmental pollution has got increasingly serious with the rapid expansion of industrialization. Zhang et al.[13] fabricated superhydrophobic and superoleophilic polyester materials by one-step growth of silicone nano laments onto the textile via chemical vapor deposition of trichloromethylsilane for oil/water separation. These materials usually show ultrahigh permeation ux for the separation of immiscible oil/water mixtures. The preparation of the superhydrophobic membranes for the separation of water-in-oil emulsion usually requires expensive materials, strict conditions (such as harsh chemical treatment), and complex processing methods including plasma etching, chemical vapor deposition, electrodeposition, calcination and the use of templates,[11,13,16,17,18,19,20] which can be challenging for the large-scale membrane fabrication. The effects of FEP content on MMMs' performances in terms of hydrophobicity, mechanical strength, permeability, and separation performance of water-in-oil emulsion were investigated respectively
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