Novel membranes with extremely high permeability fabricated by 3D printing and nickel coating for oil/water separation

Abstract

Traditional membranes for oil/water separation are subjected to the severe mutual constraint between selectivity and permeability. Fabricating membranes with extremely high permeance as well as high separation efficiency is an eternal pursuit of the research community. This study provides a robust strategy to achieve this goal. In the current study, a novel acrylonitrile–butadiene–styrene–nickel (ABS-Ni) membrane for oil/water separation was firstly developed by three-dimensional (3D) printing technology followed by in situ Ni coating. A series of characterization results demonstrate that the novel ABS-Ni membrane was successfully fabricated. The prepared ABS-Ni membrane showed underwater superoleophobicity, verified by its oil contact angle of 151.96°. The antifouling tests and extended Derjaguin–Landau–Verwey–Overbeek (XDLVO) theory reveal that the ABS-Ni membrane had a preferable antifouling surface. The filtration tests show that the ABS-Ni membrane possessed more than 99% oil rejection to 5 typical oil/water systems, namely n-hexane, soybean oil, gasoline, diesel and petroleum ether. Meanwhile, the flux of the ABS-Ni membrane reached as high as 5.34 × 10⁴ L m⁻² h⁻¹, outperforming all of the state-of-the-art membranes for oil/water separation to our knowledge. Moreover, both the flux and separation efficiency could remain above 99% after 10 cycling filtration processes, and the ABS-Ni membrane maintained stable separation functionality within a pH range from 1 to 13. This work presents a robust membrane with extremely high permeability as well as a novel membrane fabrication method for oil/water separation.