Development of janus polymer/carbon nanotubes hybrid membrane for oil-water separation

With the increasing awareness of environmental protection and need for water recycling, it is essential to develop novel materials that are able to effectively separate, remove and transfer oil spills or organic contaminants from the surface of water. Physical sorption is the popular choice for oil spill recovery yet still suffers some disadvantages such as complex synthesis process, low sorption capacities and the structures are easily damaged. To overcome that, here we report a cheap and reliable strategy to fabricate a hybrid membrane for oil-water separation. Carbon nanotubes were first grown by chemical vapor deposition (CVD) method and then fabricated into film by drop coating onto glass substrate. Self-initiated photografting and photopolymerization (SIPGP) was applied to grow polymer from the CNT film. This hybrid membrane will replace traditional membrane used to enhance the oil-water separation in an efficient way. Several characterizations have been done to this hybrid membrane include scanning electron microscopy (SEM), raman spectroscopy and fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR). (C) 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.