Effective separation of oil from water is of significant importance globally for various applications such as wastewater treatment, oil spill cleanup, and oil purification. Among the numerous approaches for oil removal, membrane separation is considered one of the most promising approaches due to its selectivity and ease of operation. Electrospinning is a promising technique for producing polymeric membranes with tunable structures with interconnected pores, large surface area, and high porosity. In this study, hydrophobic poly(vinylidene fluoride‐co‐hexafluoropropylene) (PVDF‐HFP) nanofibrous membranes were electrospun and used for this purpose. The effects of various parameters (e.g., polymer concentration, applied voltage, tip to collector distance, and feed rate) were investigated to find the optimum electrospinning conditions. Further, the electrospun membranes were characterized according to average fiber diameter, morphology, average pore size, and wettability to identify the combinations most likely to succeed in oil–water filtration. The physical–chemical properties of the membranes (i.e., thickness, areal density, porosity, average pore size, water/oil contact angle, hydrostatic pressure head, and oil filtration flux) were studied based on standard test methods. The separation efficiency of eight electrospun membranes with various pore sizes and average fiber diameters were tested for diesel/water mixtures. A linear relation was found between the initial oil flux and the average pore size of the membranes. The maximum oil filtration flux of about 224 L/m2/h, achieving over 75% oil recovery in 10 min, was obtained for the electrospun membrane with the average pore size of 4.5 μm. The membranes were successfully used for eight consecutive oil–water separation cycles without noticeable loss of flux.
In this study, polyurethane (PU) alone or in blend with 10% polystyrene (PS) or poly(vinylidene fluoride‐co‐hexafluoropropylene) (PVDF‐HFP) was used for electrospinning (ES) of nanofibers. The optimum conditions for obtaining the minimum fiber diameter were found to be [polymer] = 10 wt %, polymer feed rate = 2 mL h−1, voltage = 21 kV, tip to collector distance = 21 cm, and the drum speed = 600 rpm. The time of ES was used as a parameter for controlling the thickness and the average pore size diameter of the membranes. The average pore size diameter decreased almost linearly by increasing the thickness. The resulting electrospun membranes were hydrophobic and oleophilic in nature with the water contact angle above 130°. The hydrostatic pressure head of the membranes increased by decreasing the average pore size diameter. The maximum initial oil separation flux was achieved for the membranes with larger average pore size diameters in the order of: PU9:1PS > PU > PU9:1PVDF‐HFP. The membranes were used for four consecutive cycles without any noticeable loss of separation performance. The diesel oil recovery percentage after 1 h was found to be above 85% for the PU9:1PS and PU membranes. A commercially available polytetrafluoroethylene membrane, with a thickness of 94 μm and the average pore size diameter of 0.45 μm, was used for benchmarking. © 2018 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Appl. Polym. Sci. 2018, 135, 46890.
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