(380c) Ceramic Bowl-Supported Nanofibrous Membrane with Fluorinated Silsesquioxane-Inspired Switchable Surfaces for Successive Crude Oil/ Water Separation

Crude oil/water separation; secondary and polluted water treatment; fluorinated POSS; switchable wettings; electrospun hybrid membranes.

With increasing environmental awareness and tighter regulations, it is imperative to put forward novel strategies to separate oils from oil-contaminated water, industrial wastewaters and crude oil spill mixtures [1].

A simple, facile and economic approach was developed to transform a 2-tier hydrophilic biased electrospun hybrid PEBAX-FPOSS or Cabon/silica-FPOSS deposited on top of silica aerogel-exfoliated kaolinite ceramic, into hydrophobicity via a wetting switching mechanism subject to %FPOSS [2] variance.

Under the wetting switching mechanism (figures 1, 2), we did transform originally hydrophobic expanded polystyrene (EP)-FPOSS into super-hydrophobicity with overriding good oil sorption and recovery capacity. Within 5%-10% FPOSS incorporation into PEBAX or Carbon/Silica, the consolidated hybrid membrane scaffold exhibited hydrophilic wettings with the capability not only to separate crude oil/water mixture but also to remove bacteria from both oil/water and polluted water. However, with 30-70% FPOSS blends via electrospinning, the system switched into hydrophobic/oleophilic wetting with the capability to separate crude oil/water in good performance. The hydrophilic electrospun hybrid membranes exhibited good performances in terms of water flux rate, organic rejection, and mechanical strength, which however is an index of %FPOSS incorporation. However, it became impossible to engage in gravity-driven filtration as FPOSS incorporation exceeded 70%.

References

[1] Al-anzi, B.S.; Siang, O.C. RSC Adv. 2017, 7, 20981–20994

[2] Mabry, J; Scott, A; Iacono, T; Viers, B. Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2008, 47, 4137 –4140.