Waste plastics and oil pollution from industry and daily
life have
posed a serious threat to the environment, and it is the general trend
to resource recycle them. Herein, this work presents a sustainable
and environmentally friendly strategy for fabricating the superhydrophobic
polyethylene terephthalate@ZnO nanofibrous membrane (PET@ZnO membrane)
using Coca-Cola plastic bottles as raw materials, as well as its application
in oil–water separation. In this strategy, the PET membranes
were fabricated by combining the dual-solvent dissolution treatment
and electrospinning processes. Then, the superhydrophobic PET@ZnO
membrane with hierarchical architectures was fabricated by in situ
growth of hierarchical ZnO nanopillars on the PET fiber surfaces,
followed by hydrophobic modification. The obtained superhydrophobic
PET@ZnO membrane shows an interconnected structure and superhydrophobic
properties with a static water contact angle of 153 ± 2°.
Moreover, the superhydrophobic PET@ZnO membrane has excellent repellence
toward a corrosive solution, implying excellent chemical stability.
The separation efficiency of various water-in-oil emulsions was higher
than 99.6%, solely employing the gravity-driven process. Most importantly,
there is no significant effect on the separation properties and still
maintains a remarkable separation efficiency of almost 99.7%, while
the separation flux was retained above 992 L m–2 h–1 after using the same membrane for 10 subsequent
cycles. Therefore, this work not only provides a high-value-added
strategy for resource recycling of waste plastic and oil but also
gives an excellent membrane material with stable chemical properties
for applications in wastewater treatment and chemical separation.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.