Laser Research Group, Physics Department and Center of Excellence in Nanotechnology, King Fahd University of Petroleum & Minerals, Dhahran, 31261, Saudi Arabia.
Center of Excellence for Scientific Research Collaboration with MIT, King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals, Dhahran, 31261, Saudi Arabia.
Sci Rep. 2017 May 10;7(1):1686. doi: 10.1038/s41598-017-01959-y.
Superhydrophilic and underwater superoleophobic surfaces were fabricated by facile spray coating of nanostructured WO on stainless steel meshes and compared its performance in oil-water separation with ZnO coated meshes. The gravity driven oil-water separation system was designed using these surfaces as the separation media and it was noticed that WO coated stainless steel mesh showed high separation efficiency (99%), with pore size as high as 150 µm, whereas ZnO coated surfaces failed in the process of oil-water separation when the pore exceeded 50 µm size. Since, nanostructured WO is a well known catalyst, the simultaneous photocatalytic degradation of organic pollutants present in the separated water from the oil water separation process were tested using WO coated surfaces under UV radiation and the efficiency of this degradation was found to be quite significant. These results assure that with little improvisation on the oil water separation system, these surfaces can be made multifunctional to work simultaneously for oil-water separation and demineralization of organic pollutants from the separated water. Fabrication of the separating surface, their morphological characteristics, wettability, oil water separation efficiency and photo-catalytic degradation efficiency are enunciated.
通过在不锈钢网表面喷涂纳米结构 WO，制备出超亲水水下超疏油表面，并将其与 ZnO 涂层网的油水分离性能进行比较。使用这些表面作为分离介质设计了重力驱动的油水分离系统，结果表明 WO 涂层不锈钢网的分离效率（99%）很高，孔径高达 150μm，而 ZnO 涂层表面在孔径超过 50μm 时无法进行油水分离。由于纳米结构 WO 是一种众所周知的催化剂，因此在 WO 涂层表面在紫外辐射下对油水分离过程中从水中分离出的有机污染物进行了同时光催化降解测试，发现这种降解效率非常显著。这些结果表明，只需对油水分离系统进行一些改进，这些表面就可以多功能化，同时用于油水分离和从分离水中去除有机污染物。阐述了分离表面的制备、形貌特征、润湿性、油水分离效率和光催化降解效率。
