Highly reusable Cu₂O/PP fibrous membranes for oil/water separation

ABSTRACT

In this work, we reported a cuprous oxide/polypropylene (Cu₂O/PP) fibrous membrane with superhydrophobic (WCA = 151.8°±2.1°) and superlipophilic (OCA = 0°) for highly efficient oil/water separation through melt-electrospinning and magnetron sputtering, respectively. The surface morphology, microstructure, and wettability of the modified membrane were characterized by atomic force microscopy, scanning electron microscopy and contact angle goniometer, respectively. It was demonstrated that the Cu₂O/PP fibrous membranes showed superhydrophobic and superlipophilic, attributing to its higher roughness and lower surface energy after the deposition of Cu₂O nanoparticles. For separation of oil/water emulsion, the Cu₂O/PP fibrous membranes exhibited high separation efficiency (above 92% for various oil/water emulsion; 94.14% for n-hexane/water mixture), good stability and remarkable recyclability (92.52% for n-hexane/water mixture after 30 cycles), attributing to an outstanding adhesion of Cu₂O nanoparticles to fibrous membrane. This work could provide a simple and efficient method to fabricate highly efficient fibrous membranes in industrial oil-contaminated water treatment and marine spilt-oil cleanup.

KEYWORDS:

• Melt-electrospinning
• magnetron sputtering
• cuprous oxide
• oil/water separation

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Jiangsu Key R&D Program under Grant [BE2017060 and BE2016707]; China Postdoctoral Science Foundation under Grant [169483].