Abstract
A novel ultralight superhydrophobic-superoleophilic hybrid Carbon Nanotubes (CNTs) film with double-layer structures is fabricated by using vacuum filtration method. The CNTs film can separate various surfactant-stabilized water-in-oil emulsions with a separation efficiency higher than 99.3%. Moreover, the hybrid films can be regenerated through a simple and rapid combustion process within 2 s. In addition, the CNTs film still retains good hydrophobic properties under the conditions of physical abrasion, and strong acidic and alkaline solutions, which shows the excellent durability. The hybrid CNTs film is ultralight, stable, and easily stored and reused. The outstanding features of the obtained CNTs films we present here may find many important applications in various fields like oil purification and wastewater treatment.
Highlights
Nowadays, large amounts of oily wastewater have been discharged with the improvement of daily life and the development of industry [1]
The Carbon Nanotubes (CNTs) films are stable, stored and produced. These findings demonstrate that the as-prepared CNTs films have great potential in practical applications such as wastewater treatment, oil purification and so forth
The hybrid CNTs film fabricated by the vacuum filtration method was ultralight
Summary
Large amounts of oily wastewater have been discharged with the improvement of daily life and the development of industry [1]. Oil–water separation has been a worldwide challenge due to the tremendous threats caused by oil–water mixtures, which is harmful to the environmental as well to human health [2,3,4,5]. There are two kinds of oil–water mixture: stratified oil-water mixtures and emulsified oil–water mixtures [6]. Stratified oil–water mixtures containing larger dispersed droplets (>20 μm) are usually thermodynamically unstable and can be naturally separated over time, for a denser phase that gradually settles down and a lighter phase floats to the top. While the emulsified oil–water mixtures are relatively thermodynamically stable, micro/nano-scale emulsified droplets are generally stably dispersed in the continuous phase [7]. Due to the presence of the strong oil–water interface film and adsorbed interfacial active ingredients, the natural separation of the emulsified mixture relies on an impractically long timescale
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