One-Step Phase Separation and Mineralization Fabrication of Membranes for Oily Wastewater Treatment
Mengyang Hu, Yu‐Hsuan Chiao, Wenming Fu, Pengfei Zhang, Fang Shang, Kecheng Guan, Ralph Rolly Gonzales, Zhan Li, Ping Xu, Zhaohuan Mai, Liheng Dai, Hideto Matsuyama
Abstract
Oily wastewater threatens the environment and the human health. Membrane technology offers a simple and efficient alternative to separating oil and water. However, complex membrane modifications are usually employed to optimize the separation performance. In this research, we develop an extremely simple one-step method to in situ calcium carbonate (CaCO 3 ) nanoparticles onto a porous polyketone (PK) membrane via a nonsolvent induced phase separation (NIPS)-mineralization strategy. We utilized the unique chemical property of PK, which allows it to dissolve in a resorcinol aqueous solution. PK was mixed with tannic acid (TA) and calcium chloride (CaCl 2 ) in a resorcinol aqueous solution to fabricate a casting solution. The activated membrane was cast and immersed into a sodium carbonate (Na 2 CO 3 ) aqueous solution for taking the one-step NIPS-mineralization process. This proposed NIPS-mineralization mechanism comes to two conclusions: (i) the resulting membrane with comprehensive oleophobic properties and enhanced permeation flux for applications of oil/water separation with ultralow fouling and (ii) simplified the procedure to optimize the membrane performance using regular NIPS steps. The current work explores a one-step NIPS-mineralization technique that offers a novel approach to preparing membranes with highly efficient oil/water separation performance.