Energy‐Efficient Oil–Water Separation of Biomimetic Copper Membrane with Multiscale Hierarchical Dendritic Structures

Abstract

Membrane-based materials with special surface wettability have been applied widely for the treatment of increasing industrial oily waste water, as well as frequent oil spill accidents. However, traditional technologies are energy-intensive and limited, either by fouling or by the inability of a single membrane to separate all types of oil-water mixtures. Herein, a biomimetic monolayer copper membrane (BMCM), composed of multiscale hierarchical dendritic structures, is cleverly designed and successfully fabricated on steel mesh substrate. It not only possesses the ability of energy-efficient oil-water separation but also excellent self-recovery anti-oil-fouling properties (<150 s). The BMCM even keeps high separation efficiency (>93%) after ten-time cycling tests. More importantly, it retains efficient oil-water separation capacity for five different oils. In fact, these advanced features are benefited by the synergistic effect of chemical compositions and physical structures, which is inspired by the typical nonwetting strategy of butterfly wing scales. The findings in this work may inspire a facile but effective strategy for repeatable and antipollution oil-water separation, which is more suitable for various applications under practical conditions, such as wastewater treatment, fuel purification, separation of commercially relevant oily water, and so forth.

Oil Recovery from Nanoporous Media via Water Condensation

“…Because of its increasing role in today's energy market, hydrocarbon extraction from unconventional reservoirs requires new methods to manipulate oily fluids contained within nanoporous materials . One may anticipate that these approaches are also relevant to a much broader range of situations involving oil‐dominated flow across nanoporous media, as is ubiquitous in industrial nanocatalysis, environmental clean‐up, and membrane technologies . Standard oil recovery from conventional reservoirs is usually considered within the framework of fluid transport in porous media .…”

Bio‐Inspired Photonic Materials: Prototypes and Structural Effect Designs for Applications in Solar Energy Manipulation

“…[8b,159] For example, butterfly wings have optical functions of structural color. What's more, they have functions of superhydrophobicity, self‐cleaning and so forth . The integration of antireflection and superhydrophobicity is very important for solar cells.…”

Chemically reactive protein nanoparticles for synthesis of a durable and deformable superhydrophobic material

“…20,21 Most of the hierarchical structures are inherently fragile to various mechanical forces including physical abrasion, stretching, compression etc., which results in the loss of superhydrophobicity. [22][23][24][25][26] Furthermore, appropriate low surface energy coatings are generally optimized in articially fabricated superhydrophobic surfaces by associating with weak chemical interactions, including metal-thiol interaction, 27,28 metal-ion interaction 29,30 and silane chemistry, 31,32 which are known to be labile 33 and unsustainable in practically relevant harsh aqueous chemical conditions. Hence, many of the reported superhydrophobic interfaces are inappropriate for performing in practically relevant severe and diverse conditions.…”