Separating Oil-Water Nanoemulsions using Flux-Enhanced Hierarchical Membranes
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Solomon-2014-Separating oil-water.pdf
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5.33 MB
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Checksum (MD5)
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Author(s)
Solomon, Brian Richmond
Hyder, Md Nasim
Varanasi, Kripa K.
Date Issued
July 2014
Journal
Scientific Reports
Publisher
Nature Publishing Group
Citation
Solomon, Brian R., Md. Nasim Hyder, and Kripa K. Varanasi. “Separating Oil-Water Nanoemulsions Using Flux-Enhanced Hierarchical Membranes.” Sci. Rep. 4 (July 1, 2014).
Version
Final published version
Abstract
Membranes that separate oil-water mixtures based on contrasting wetting properties have recently received significant attention. Separation of nanoemulsions, i.e. oil-water mixtures containing sub-micron droplets, still remains a key challenge. Tradeoffs between geometric constraints, high breakthrough pressure for selectivity, high flux, and mechanical durability make it challenging to design effective membranes. In this paper, we fabricate a hierarchical membrane by the phase inversion process that consists of a nanoporous separation skin layer supported by an integrated microporous layer. We demonstrate the separation of water-in-oil emulsions well below 1 μm in size. In addition, we tune the parameters of the hierarchical membrane fabrication to control the skin layer thickness and increase the total flux by a factor of four. These simple yet robust hierarchical membranes with engineered wetting characteristics show promise for large-scale, efficient separation systems.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Mechanical Engineering
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1038/srep05504
