Hydrophobic Carbon Nitride Nanolayer Enables High-Flux Oil/Water Separation with Photocatalytic Antifouling Ability
He Mao, Suqin Wu, Shubin Xiong, Lei Zhang, Lai Chen, Xiaoying Peng, Shengliang Zhong, Zhang‐Hui Lu, Shuiliang Chen, Wei‐Guang Zhang, Chaoliang Tan, Guiming Peng, Chong Liu
Abstract
Efficient oil/water separation tackles various issues in occasions of oil leakage and oil discharge, such as environmental pollution, recollection of the oil, and saving the water. Herein, a compact superhydrophobic/superoleophilic graphitic carbon nitride nanolayer coated on carbon fiber networks (CNBA/CF) is designed and synthesized for efficient gravity-driven oil/water separation. The CNBA/CF shows excellent oil absorption and an impressive oil/water filtration separation performance. The flux reaches the state-of-art value of 4.29 × 10 5 L/m 2 /h for dichloromethane with separation efficiency up to 99%. Successive oil absorption tests, long-term filtration separation, and harsh conditions experiments confirm the remarkable separation and chemical structure stability of the CNBA/CF filter. Besides, the CNBA/CF demonstrates good photocatalytic antifouling ability thanks to the extended visible light absorption and improved charge separation. This work combines the material surface wettability modulation with a photocatalytic self-cleaning property in the fabrication of efficient oil/water separation materials while overcoming the filter fouling issue.