Separating oil–water
mixtures is a common obstacle in many
processes from wastewater treatment to biofuel manufacture to cleanup
of oil spills. There is an urgent need for new, fast, and simple technologies
for such separations. In this work, we describe a simple and practical
route for creating superoleophilic electrospun membranes that are
capable of selectively passing oil and organic compounds at very high
rates in a gravity-driven system while retaining water. To prepare
these membranes, we blended a new, highly fluorinated random copolymer
(FCP), poly(methyl methacrylate-random-perfluorodecyl
methacrylate), P(MMA-r-FDMA), with the commodity
polymer poly(vinylidene fluoride) (PVDF) and prepared electrospun
membranes from their mixture. Membranes composed of nonwoven fibers
with uniform and bead-free morphology were obtained upon electrospinning
of PVDF blended with this FCP. The PMMA segments provided anchors
to the PVDF matrix, resulting in significant enhancement in the mechanical
properties with up to 7 times higher Young’s modulus for the
blend membranes. Moreover, the self-organization of the long, pendant
FDMA side groups within the PVDF matrix resulted in fluorine-rich,
highly hydrophobic and superoleophilic surface. As a result, the FCP-containing
membranes exhibited up to 17 times faster permeation of oil and organic
solvent, compared with pure PVDF membrane in gravity-driven filtration
experiments. Their performance was highly stable during a 70 min continuous
gravity-driven filtration experiment for oil/water separation, reflecting
their excellent fouling resistant properties. This easy-to-implement
and cost-effective approach, combined with the high porosity and re-entrant
structure created by the electrospinning, can create membranes with
excellent mechanical properties and fouling resistance.
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