title: Electrospun Fibrous Mat with pH-Switchable Superwettability That Can Separate Layered Oil/Water Mixtures.
abstract: Oil/water separation has inspired much research interest because of the damages caused to our natural environment due to oily wastewater. As a leader of advanced separation materials, electrospun polymeric fibrous mats having the properties of special surface wettability, high specific surface area, and high porosity will be a good membrane material for the separation of oily wastewater. Herein, we first prepared pH-responsive polymer poly(dimethylsiloxane)-block-poly(4-vinylpyridine) (PDMS-b-P4VP) mat using electrospinning technology. The PDMS-b-P4VP fibrous mat with a thickness of around 250 μm exhibits good pH-switchable oil/water wettability and is able to effectively separate oil or water from layered oil/water mixtures by gravity driven through adjusting the pH value. Stemming from its porous structure and pH-switchable superwettability, the electrospun PDMS-b-P4VP fibrous mat achieved controllable separations with high fluxes of approximately 9000 L h-1m-2for oil (hexane) and 27 000 L h-1m-2for water. In addition, extended studies on the polymer/silica nanoparticulate (silica NP) composite fibrous mats show that the addition of an inorganic component improves the thermal stability, pH-switchable wettability, and separation performance of the fibrous mats (approximately 9000 L h-1m-2for hexane and 32 000 L h-1m-2for water). It can be concluded from the results that both polymer fibrous mats and silica-filled composite fibrous mats are good candidates for on-demand layered oil/water mixture separation.
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemical Engineering, School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University , Shanghai 200240, P. R. China.
authors.forename: Jin-Jin
authors.initials: JJ
authors.lastname: Li
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemical Engineering, School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University , Shanghai 200240, P. R. China.
authors.forename: Yin-Ning
authors.identifier: 0000-0003-3509-3983
authors.initials: YN
authors.lastname: Zhou
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemical Engineering, School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University , Shanghai 200240, P. R. China.
authors.forename: Zhi-Dong
authors.initials: ZD
authors.lastname: Jiang
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemical Engineering, School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University , Shanghai 200240, P. R. China.
authors.forename: Zheng-Hong
authors.identifier: 0000-0001-9011-6020
authors.initials: ZH
authors.lastname: Luo