مقالته 1 والاهم
مقالته 1 والاهم
مقالته 1 والاهم
SUBJECT AREAS:
superoleophobic mesh for oil-water
MATERIALS SCIENCE
NANOSCIENCE AND
separation
TECHNOLOGY
Lianbin Zhang1, Yujiang Zhong1, Dongkyu Cha2 & Peng Wang1
CHEMISTRY
ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES
1
Biological and Environmental Sciences and Engineering Division, Water Desalination and Reuse Center, King Abdullah University
of Science and Technology, Thuwal 23955–6900, Saudi Arabia, 2Advanced Nanofabrication Imaging and Characterization Core
Received Lab, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, Thuwal 23955-6900, Saudi Arabia.
13 June 2013
Accepted Oil–water separation has recently become a global challenging task because of the frequent occurrence of oil
17 July 2013 spill accidents due to the offshore oil production and transportation, and there is an increasing demand for
the development of effective and inexpensive approaches for the cleaning-up of the oily pollution in water
Published system. In this study, a self-cleaning underwater superoleophobic mesh that can be used for oil-water
31 July 2013 separation is prepared by the layer-by-layer (LbL) assembly of sodium silicate and TiO2 nanoparticles on the
stainless steel mesh. The integration of the self-cleaning property into the all-inorganic separation mesh by
using TiO2 enables the convenient removal of the contaminants by ultraviolet (UV) illumination, and allows
Correspondence and for the facile recovery of the separation ability of the contaminated mesh, making it promising for practial
oil-water separation applications.
requests for materials
should be addressed to
P.W. (peng.wang@
A
dvanced materials with desirable wettability are very important in oil/water related applications, such as
kaust.edu.sa)
oily industrial wastewater treatment and oil spill cleanup1–13. Recently, inspired by the remarkably oil-
repellent characteristic of fish scales in aqueous media, the membranes with hydrophilic and underwater
superoleophobic properties have been developed and shown to be promising materials for oil and water sepa-
ration14–22. These water-loving and water-permeable separation membranes are advantageous over traditional
hydrophobic and oleophilic materials for two reasons: (1) they allow water to pass, which effectively avoids or
reduces the possibility of membrane clogging by the viscous oil; (2) they prevent the formation of the water barrier
between the membranes and the oil phase, which would otherwise occur with the conventional hydrophobic and
oleophilic separation materials due to the fact that water is generally heavier than oil phase and it thus prevents the
contact between oil and separation membranes.
The preparation of the hydrophilic and underwater superoleophobic separation membranes are based on
hydrophilic surface modification of base materials along with generation of surface micro-nano structures, which
contributes to surface roughness and amplifies surface wetting behaviors17–22. The current methods for surface
hydrophilic modification can be categorized into two groups: (1) hydrophilic organic polymer-based grafting17–20
and (2) inorganic material coating21,22. Generally speaking, the inorganic coating is more desirable than the
polymeric one because the latter usually suffers from poor stability and becomes unstable under harsh conditions
which occur during the separation process. However, for the current inorganic coating methods, hydrothermal-
based synthesis procedure is generally required21,22, which prohibits large-scale production and thus not suitable
for practical applications. Furthermore, in practical applications the hydrophilic or superhydrophilic surfaces of
the separation materials are prone to contamination by low-surface-energy substances due to their intrinsically
high surface energy9,23,24. These low-surface-energy contaminants, once adsorbed, are difficult to remove and
often cause the surface wetting behaviors to deteriorate, leading to the materials to lose their separation per-
formance. It is for this reason that frequent washing-based maintenance to the separation membranes is generally
required, which significantly increases the operation cost of these separation processes. It should be noted that
very recently, Feng and coworkers reported a hydrothermal preparation of a double-layer TiO2-based mesh
membrane with superhydrophobicity and superoleophilicity, which could be used for both the separation of bulk
oil from water and the degradation of dissolved pollutants in water25. However, their work did not target the
contamination problem of the separation mesh. Based on these, a facile and low-cost approach for preparation of
inorganic-coating-based oil-water separation membranes, which have self-cleaning capability, is highly desired.
Methods
Materials and chemicals. Stainless steel mesh (80 mesh) was purchased from Alfa
Aesar. Sodium silicate solution, titanium isopropoxide, poly(diallyldimethylam-
monium chloride) (PDDA, 20 wt%, Mw ca. 100 0002200 000), silicone oil, 1,2-
dichloroethane, diiodomethane, hexadecane, hexane, 1,3,5-trimethylbenzene, oleic
acid, and mineral oil were all purchased from Sigma-Aldrich and used as received.
Water purified in a Milli-Q (MilliPore) system was used during all the experiments.
The colloidal TiO2 suspension was prepared by the controlled hydrolysis of titanium
isopropoxide according to a previous reported method39. No. 95 gasoline was
purchased from a local gas station.
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Acknowledgments
The authors thank King Abdullah University of Science and Technology for research
TiO2-based mesh. Energy Environ. Sci. 6, 1147–1151 (2013).
funding support.
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