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One-step facile fabrication of mechanical strong porous boron nitride nanosheets-polymer electrospun nanofibrous membranes for repeatable emulsified oil/water separation

Year: 2021

Journal: Sep. Purif. Technol., Volume 264, JUN 1

Authors: He, Li; Lei, Weiwei; Liu, Dan

Organizations: Australian Research Council Discovery Program [DP190103290]; Australian Research Council Future Fellowship [FT200100730]

Keywords: Porous boron nitride nanosheets; Oil/water separation; Electrospun nanofiber; Underwater superoleophobicity membrane; Polyacrylonitrile

The separation of oily wastewater with its growing commercial demand is a big challenge due to a lot of oily wastewater produced in the petroleum industry and draining pollutes the environment. Porous boron nitride nanosheets (BNNS) is a highly efficient adsorbent material for organic pollutants especially for oily pollutants due to its high surface area. However, the nanosheets assembled membranes have a relatively low mechanical properties and it is hard to be collected after removing organic pollutants. In this work, a novel porous boron nitride nanosheets/polyacrylonitrile (PAN) nanofibrous membrane was fabricated through a simple one-step electrospinning strategy for mechanical strong and repeatable emulsified oil/water separation. Compared to pristine PAN membrane, membrane with porous BNNS addition of 4 wt% shows a slight lower permeability of 12885 +/- 131 L mu m m(-2) h(-1) bar(-1), but with much higher separation efficiency of 99% for pump oil/water emulsions. In addition, the membranes demonstrated excellent mechanical performance as increasing porous BNNS loading, with improved mechanical strength by about 49.6% from 13.3 MPa to 19.9 MPa, enhanced Young's modulus by about 456.2% from 25.1 to 139.6 MPa, respectively. Therefore, the membrane can be easily recycled and used for more than 25 cycles without significant change.