Separating Hydrocarbons From Aqueous Mixtures Using Bio-Inspired Super-Hydrophobic Membrane Filters

Membrane surface properties play a key role in the separation processes specifically in membrane distillation and non-polar solvent separation from water. For oil/water separation applications, various surface wettability characteristics, like superhydrophilic-underwater oleophobic (Wei, Sun et al. 2017, Jiang, Chen et al. 2018, Zhang, Wang et al. 2018), superhydrophobic-superoleophilic (Yue, Li et al. 2017, Ma, Zhao et al. 2018) and omniphobic (Lin, Nejati et al. 2014, Boo, Lee et al. 2016, Lee, Boo et al. 2016) can be utilized depending on the applications. Superhydrophobic surface have a water contact angle (CA) ? 150¯ and sliding angle (SA) ? 10¯.