Separation of water droplets from water-in-diesel dispersion using superhydrophobic polypropylene fibrous membranes

Effects of Surfactants on the Morphology and Properties of Electrospun Polyetherimide Fibers

“…Electrospun fibers were used in water-diesel separation applications [35,36]. The electrospun fiber mats served as a barrier to the dispersed water drops.…”

“…These emulsified water droplets often possess typical drop sizes ranging from 100 nm to few microns and inseparable using conventional techniques like gravity settling and cyclone separators. Polymeric nanofibers are of great interest in various applications such as catalysis [33,34], wound dressing [29], drug delivery [29], sensor technology [6] and filtration [35]. Nonwoven based superhydrophobic structures are often used as filter media, but not all hydrophobic surfaces interact with emulsified mixture to achieve effective separation efficiency.…”

Design of near-superhydrophobic/superoleophilic PVDF and PP membranes for the gravity-driven breaking of water-in-oil emulsions

“…It is important to note that in their preparation process, they immersed the substrates in the coagulation bath several minutes at a certain humidity after casting the solutions, meaning that vapor-induced phase separation (VIPS) also occurred, process that leads to nodular structure with PVDF material, but it is very difficult to state on the dominating factor influencing the structure (ammonia in the coagulation bath or VIPS process parameters). Other very recent papers mentioned the use of electrospun fibers for the separation of dispersed water from diesel, but a supplementary transmembrane pressure difference was involved (as a centrifugal fuel transfer pump was used upstream of the membrane) and researchers focused on the hydrophobicity of the membrane (saying very little on its oleophilicity) [27,28] . Also, research studies on similar theme, such as that of Xiang et al [29] , are more likely to be oriented toward the separation of dispersed oil from seawater, explained by the needs for efficient treatment to address oil spills.…”

Designing high-caliber nonwoven filter mats for coalescence filtration of oil/water emulsions

“…Many interesting methods to gain superwettability were innovated [21][22][23]. For example, Jin and Jiang [24] developed superhydrophobic and superoleophilic PVDF membranes for effective separation of water-in-oil emulsions.…”