Developing an effective and sustainable solution for cleaning up or separating oily water is highly desired. In this work, we report a completely inorganic mesh membrane made up of cupric phosphate (Cu(PO)) in a special intersected nanosheets-constructed structure. Combing the hierarchical structure with strong hydration ability of Cu(PO), the nanosheets-wrapped membrane exhibits a superior superhydrophilic and underwater anti-oil-fouling and antibio-fouling property for efficient oil/water separation to various viscous oils such as heavy diesel oil, light crude oil, and even heavy crude oil with underwater oil contact angles (CAs) all above 158° and nearly zero underwater oil adhesive force even when a large preload force of up to 400 μN was applied on the oil droplet. Simultaneously, the membrane exhibits a high chemical and thermal stability and outstanding salt tolerance. Continuous separation operated on a cross-flow filtration apparatus demonstrates a large separation capacity and long-term stability of the membrane during treating a 2000 L crude oil/water mixture with constantly stable permeating flux of ∼4000 L/m h and oil content in the filtrate below 2 ppm. The excellent anti-oil-fouling property, high separation capacity, and easily scaled-up preparation process of the membrane show great potential for practical application in treating oily wastewater.

Superhydrophobic membranes with extreme liquid water repellency property are good candidates for waterproof and breathable application. Different from the mostly used strategies through either mixing or postmodifying base membranes with perfluorinated compounds, we report in this work a facile methodology to fabricate superhydrophobic microporous membranes made up of pure poly(vinylidene fluoride) (PVDF) via a high-humidity induced electrospinning process. The superhydrophobic property of the PVDF microporous membrane is contributed by its special microsphere-fiber interpenetrated rough structure. The effective pore size and porosity of the PVDF membranes could be well tuned by simply adjusting the PVDF concentrations in polymer solutions. The membrane with optimized superhydrophobicity and porous structure exhibits improved waterproof and breathable performance with hydrostatic pressure up to 62 kPa, water vapor transmission rate (WVT rate) of 10.6 kg m d, and simultaneously outstanding windproof performance with air permeability up to 1.3 mm s. Our work represents a rather simple and perfluorinated-free strategy for fabricating superhydrophobic microporous membranes, which matches well with the environmentally friendly requirement from the viewpoint of practical application.

A hydrogel-embedded tight ultrafiltration membrane composed of sodium polyacrylate-modified polyacrylonitrile with excellent anti-dye-fouling property can effectively separate dyes from salts.