Nature-inspired green method decorated MXene-based composite membrane for high-efficiency oil/water separation

Nature inspired 'green' method has been reported for the fabrication of nanoparticles from the plant derived polyphenol tannic acid (TA) and 3-aminopropyltriethoxysilane (APTES). In present investigation, TA-APTES nanoparticles decorated MXene nanosheets were acted as active layers and TA-APTES@MXene composite membrane were constructed by vacuum self-assembly on cellulose acetate support in order to improve membrane performance. The modified membrane showed an excellent hydrophilicity with a water flux of 5990.11 L.m(-2).h(-1) at 0.1 MPa, which is 15 times higher than pure MXene membrane. Moreover, the removal ratios of three different types of oil/water emulsions (petroleum ether, lubricating oil and vegetable oil) were found to be more than 98%. More importantly, the highly oleophobic membrane surface maintained a relatively high separation performances after four consecutive cycles of performances. This investigation achieves a leap of MXene-based membrane materials from nano-to micro-scale, which provides valuable insights in the field of oil/water separation.