Underwater Superoleophobic Membrane with Enhanced Oil–Water Separation, Antimicrobial, and Antifouling Activities

Abstract

Despite extensive progress in the development of robust artificial membranes addressing the oil pollution issue, the current solutions are susceptible to limited functionalities, such as inability to separate small emulsions and poor resistance to notorious biological contaminants and fouling as a result of the complexity in their operating environments. Here a facile one‐step approach is reported to engineer a novel composite membrane that spans a wide range of functional properties. By tailoring the surface structure, chemical composition, and harnessing the synergistic cooperation of nonadhesion ability of polyethylene glycol (PEG) and silver nanoparticles embedded in the PEG matrixes (PEG‐Ag NPs membrane), the designed membrane allows for high separation efficiency (>99.9%) in a wide range of operating conditions, as well as enhanced antimicrobial and antimarine fouling activities. It is anticipated that the facile fabrication and multifunctional performances will bring this membrane a step closer to practical applications including the clean‐up of oil spills, waste water treatment, fuel purification, and the separation of commercially relevant emulsions.

Antifouling membranes for oily wastewater treatment: Interplay between wetting and membrane fouling

“…In addition to oil foulant, real-world oily wastewater contains various other kinds of foulants, such as organic foulants, inorganic foulants and biofilms. [18,21,50,143] It is challenging to prevent fouling by these foulants at the same time. Property of the membrane (e.g., surface hydrophilicity and structure) and the wastewater (e.g., composition and concentration), configuration of the filtration module, and operation conditions are all relevant to membrane fouling during filtration.…”

Antibacterial Polymeric Films Fabricated by [2+2] Cycloaddition–Retroelectrocyclization and Ag+ Ion Coordination

“…Among the several different proposed mechanisms of the antibacterial activities, Ag + ions usually inactivate enzymes and proteins by interacting with their thiol groups. Polymeric materials containing Ag + ions or Ag nanoparticles (films, membranes, fibers, and gels) and their coatings on various materials have been the target of these types of studies . However, difficulties in homogeneously dispersing Ag + salts into polymeric materials remained due to the poor miscibility of inorganic salts within organic polymers.…”

“…Polymeric materials containing Ag + ions or Ag nanoparticles (films, membranes, fibers, and gels) and their coatings on various materials have been the target of these types of studies. [8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25] However, difficulties in homogeneously dispersing Ag + salts into polymeric materials remained due to the poor miscibility of inorganic salts within organic polymers. The Ag + salts partially release Ag + ions at certain stages, but the poor diffusibility of the Ag + ions over hydrophobic non-polar polymers often reduces the antibacterial activities.…”

Janus Copper Mesh Film with Unidirectional Water Transportation Ability toward High Efficiency Oil/Water Separation

“…[13] The second type is films with superhydrophilicity/underwater superoleophobicity,s uch as hydrogel-coated metal films, [33] porousn itrocellulose membranes, [34] and Cu(OH) 2 -coated copperm esh films, [35] that can separate water from the mixture. [36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44][45][46][47][48][49][50][51][52][53][54] Notably,a ll these films can only separatec ertain types of oil/water mixture, either light oil/water mixtures (1 oil < 1 water )o rh eavy oil/water mixtures (1 oil > 1 water ). Briefly,i ns uperhydrophobic/superoleophilic films that can removeo il from mixtures, light oil/water mixtures (1 oil < 1 water )a re unfavorable because the water can sink down and accumulate on the film as ab arrier layer,w hich thusb locks oil permeation.…”