Abstract

Ultrafast laser structuring has proven to alter the wettability performance of surfaces drastically due to controlled modification of the surface roughness and energy. Surface alteration can be achieved also by coating the surfaces with functional materials with enhanced durability. On this line, robust and tunable surface wettability performance can be achieved by the synergic effects of ultrafast laser structuring and coating. In this work, femtosecond laser-structured stainless steel (SS-100) meshes were used to host the growth of NaAlSi2O6–H2O zeolite films. Contact angle measurements were carried on pristine SS-100 meshes, zeolite-coated SS-100 meshes, laser-structured SS-100 meshes, and zeolite-coated laser-structured SS-100 meshes. Enhanced hydrophilic behavior was observed in the zeolite-coated SS-100 meshes (contact angle 72°) and in laser-structured SS-100 meshes (contact angle 41°). On the other hand, superior durable hydrophilic behavior was observed for the zeolite-coated laser-structured SS-100 meshes (contact angle 14°) over an extended period and reusability. In addition, the zeolite-coated laser-structured SS-100 meshes were subjected to oil–water separation tests and revealed augmented effectuation for oil–water separation.

Highlights

  • Industrial wastewater from food and chemical processing, oil refining, and metal structuring consists of water contaminated with oil, which needs an efficient oil–water separation (Ranade and Bhandari, 2014)

  • The X-ray diffraction (XRD) spectra of zeolite-coated laser-structured SS-100 meshes (Figure 2A), zeolite (Figure 2B), and SS-100 substrate (Figure 2C) were recorded for 800-nm films. Inspection of these spectra reveals that the target zeolite NaAlSi2O6–H2O can be characterized as analcime (JCPDS 41-1478) with a hexagonal crystal structure (Ma et al, 2015; Bisung and Dickin, 2020)

  • The XRD spectra for SS-100 mesh reveal that it can be identified as a polycrystalline material with face-centered cubic crystal structure (Pető et al, 2020)

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Summary

Introduction

Industrial wastewater from food and chemical processing, oil refining, and metal structuring consists of water contaminated with oil, which needs an efficient oil–water separation (Ranade and Bhandari, 2014). Traditional methods of oil separation techniques from oil-polluted wastewater involve heating, skimming, and chemical dispersion (Rasouli et al, 2021). Despite their effectiveness in oil separation, these methods suffer from producing harmful products leading to a reduction in the oil separation efficiency with time (Rasouli et al, 2021). To overcome this shortcoming, various techniques (Pal, 2017) have been proposed in the literature to separate oil from oil-contaminated wastewater. The use of clean and sustainable organic membranes for oil–water separation is still a standing challenge to be resolved

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