Facile fabrication of durable superhydrophobic fabrics by silicon polyurethane membrane for oil/water separation

Nowadays, oil contamination has become a major reason for water pollution, and presents a global envi-ronmental challenge. Although many efforts have been devoted to the fabrication of oil/water separation materials, their practical applications are still hindered by their weak durability, poor chemical tolerance, environmental resistance, and potential negative impact on health and the environment. To overcome these drawbacks, this work offers a facile method to fabricate the eco-friendly and durable oil/water sep-aration membrane fabrics by alkaline hydrolysis and silicon polyurethane coating. The X-ray photoelec-tron spectroscopy, scanning electron microscopy, and atomic force microscopy results demonstrate that silicon polyurethane membrane could be coated onto the surface of hydrolyzed polyester fabric and form a micro-/nano-scaled hierarchical structure. Based on this, the modified fabric could have a stable super -hydrophobic property with a water contact angle higher than 150 degrees, even after repeated washing and mechanical abrasion 800 times, as well as chemical corrosion. Moreover, the modified fabrics show excel-lent oil/water separation efficiency of up to 99% for various types of oil-water mixture. Therefore, this durable, eco-friendly and cost-efficient superhydrophobic fabric has great potential in large-scale oil/wa-ter separation.(c) 2022 The Chemical Industry and Engineering Society of China, and Chemical Industry Press Co., Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).