Properties of super-hydrophobic copper and stainless steel meshes: Applications in controllable water permeation and organic solvents/water separation

Abstract

26The wettability and hydrophobicity of super-hydrophobic (SH) meshes is greatly influenced 27 by their topographic structures, chemical composition and coating process. In this study, the 28 properties of copper and stainless steel meshes, coated with super-hydrophobic electrolessly 29 deposited silver were investigated. A new method to test the pressure resistance of super-30hydrophobic mesh was applied to avoid any deformation of mesh. Results showed that SH 31 copper mesh and SH stainless steel meshes with the same pore size have almost the same 32 contact angle and the same hydrophobicity. SH copper mesh with a pore size of 122 μm can 33 resist water pressure of 4900 Pa and a decrease of pore size of mesh can increase the pressure 34 resistance of SH copper mesh. The SH copper mesh modified with 0.1M HS(CH2)10COOH 35 solution in ethanol has a controllable water permeation property by simply adjusting the pH of 36 water solution. SH copper mesh shows super-oleophilicity with organic solvents and so with a 37 water contact angle of 0° and it can be an effective tool for organic solvents/water separation. 38The separation efficiency of SH copper mesh for separating mixtures of organic solvent and 39 water can be as high as 99.8%. 40 41

A low cost, superhydrophobic and superoleophilic hybrid kaolin-based hollow fibre membrane (KHFM) for efficient adsorption–separation of oil removal from water

“…[9][10][11] To date, more studies have focused on superhydrophobic and superoleophilic gras on a stainless steel mesh have been focused due to their antichemical erosion, anti-heat ageing and easy obtainability. [12][13][14][15][16] However, stainless steel is expensive and its industrial application is limited to 500$ per m 2 to 1000$ per m 2 . 17 The other disadvantage of stainless steel is the lack of exibility which limits possible shapes to achieve a high surface area.…”

Purification of oily seawater/wastewater using superhydrophobic nano-silica coated mesh and sponge

“…HDTMS is more grafted on the SiNPcoated mesh than the bare mesh, and thus the hydrophobicity of the HDTMS-SiNP-mesh is greater than that of the HDTMS-mesh. This enhancement effect of superhydrophobicity by the coating of nanostructural materials can be found in other reports for ZnO [10,22], Ag clusters [21], and Cu 2 O [12]. The chemical composition (surface free energy) and geometrical structure (micro/nanoscale surface roughness) are known to be the two main factors that determine the surface wettability of a solid surface [22].…”

“…Superhydrophobic or superhydrophilic substrates for gravitydriven oil separation have mainly used stainless steel [5,8,10,21,22] or copper mesh [9,11,12]. In the case of copper mesh, the surface is principally modified with Cu 2 O film, which is prepared by electrodeposition or thermal oxidation, to obtain hydrophobicity [12].…”

“…Stainless steel mesh is often selected by many researchers due to its high physicochemical stability, wide availability, and relatively low cost. Several methods, including spray-dry [8], electrochemical deposition [12], dip-coating [23], and immobilization of hydrophobic moieties [21], have been used to fabricate superhydrophobic stainless steel mesh, which is subsequently used to separate oilwater mixtures. Therefore, herein, the easy and simple dip-coating of SiNP on stainless steel mesh was selected as the fabrication method for the superhydrophobic oil-water separator, which is economically viable, can be implemented on a larger-scale, and is recyclable.…”

Design, production and characterisation of granular adsorbent material for arsenic removal from contaminated wastewater

“…It used proprietary FTA32 software to control the height of the drop dispenser and the volume of the water drop and thus determine the contact angle (Sang et al, 2015).…”