Hydrophobic Porous Polypropylene with Hierarchical Structures for Ultrafast and Highly Selective Oil/Water Separation

Abstract

Recently, various porous absorbents have been developed and the in situ vacuum/pump-assisted continuous separation process has proven to be the most efficient technique to utilize those absorbents for oil spill cleanup. However, to achieve a high oil removal throughput, a high pumping pressure and/or large absorbent pore sizes are required, which would compromise the selectivity of oil/water separation, as water may penetrate the absorbent beyond a critical external pressure. In this work, this challenge has been circumvented by employing hierarchically porous polypropylene (PP) with controlled pore sizes generated from a tricontinuous heterophase polymer blend system. As compared to unimodal pores, the incorporation of the secondary smaller pores significantly enhances the oil removal throughput by up to 4–5 times without the necessity of raising the pumping pressure or increasing the diameter of the primary pores, which in turn, prevents compromising the oil/water separation selectivity.

Surface Migration of Conductive PEBA in Ternary Polymer Blend Films with Different Wetting Morphologies

“…Multiple phase polymer blends with tailored structures and properties have seen great interest over the past 15 years. − As compared to conventional binary blends, multiple percolated structures in multiphase systems are advantageous for many functional applications (e.g., conductivity, high mechanical properties, and porosity), but the morphology development in these blends is also more complicated. ,,,, Harkins’ spreading theory has been the most widely used to explain the morphology in ternary polymer blend systems. ,,,, In this model, three coefficients are defined based on the interfacial tensions of the components, and two main types of morphologies are predicted, as schematically shown in Figure . For a particular spreading coefficient λ abc , a higher numeric value indicates a stronger tendency of phase b wetting the a/c interface.…”

Three‐dimensional hierarchical nanostructured porous epoxidized natural rubber latex/poly(vinyl alcohol) material for oil/water separation

“…4 Until now, several techniques such as coalescence, 5 oil skimming, 6 biological treatment 7 and flotation 8 and so forth, have been used for oily wastewater to obtain purified water, yet they have many disadvantages cannot be ignored, including require excessive energy consumption, poor selectivity, high cost and complex instruments. 9,10 In the past few years, more and more attention has been paid to investigations applying and preparing materials with special super-wetting properties for oily wastewater management. [11][12][13][14][15] According to the separation method super-wetting separation materials could be divided into two categories of filtration-based and adsorption based materials.…”

“…It is a vitally urgent task for scientists all over the world to develop advanced strategies for handling the oily wastewater, particularly for surfactant‐stabilized micro/nano‐sized emulsions 4 . Until now, several techniques such as coalescence, 5 oil skimming, 6 biological treatment 7 and flotation 8 and so forth, have been used for oily wastewater to obtain purified water, yet they have many disadvantages cannot be ignored, including require excessive energy consumption, poor selectivity, high cost and complex instruments 9,10 …”

Structure–Processing–Property Relationships of 3D Printed Porous Polymeric Materials

“…Porosity is a property that offers a variety of benefits within polymer-based structures, including high surface area-to-volume ratio, flexibility, and selective permeability . Thus, porous materials have broad applications in adsorption, , separation, − sensing, , catalysis, , and biomedical engineering. − Combining porosity with advanced manufacturing methods such as 3D printing (3DP) is an attractive option for producing objects with complex geometries, such as custom shoe midsoles, , football helmet linings, battery electrodes, tissue scaffolds, ,, and biomimicking materials. − Despite these benefits, further developments are required for porous polymeric materials to realize their full potential within 3DP.…”