ABSTRACT

Electrospun Janus Membrane Fabrication via Lamination for Oil/Water Emulsion Separation

Electrospun Janus nanofiber membranes have attracted considerable interest as membranes for oil-in-water emulsion separation due to the opposite properties on each side of the membrane.  The main issue with the development of this kind of membrane is scalability and adherence issues between the opposite hydrophilic and hydrophobic nanofibre layers during fabrication. Lamination of said hydrophobic and hydrophilic nanofibre layers can offer an effective way of overcoming both these issues. In the presented work separate hydrophilic Polyamide6 and hydrophobic Polyvinylidene fluoride-co-hexafluoropropylene electrospun nanofibre membranes are laminated together using a commercially available textile adhesive to fabricate an electrospun Janus membrane capable of efficient oil/water separation. The produced membrane exhibited a high oil/water separation efficiency of > 99.97% at an applied emulsion flux rate of 1590 L/m2/hr demonstrating the simplicity and effectiveness of the fabrication method. This work presents a simple, scalable and novel method of fabricating an electrospun Janus membrane for highly efficient oil/water separation.

BIOGRAPHY

Dr. Yen Bach Truong is a Research Team Leader and Senior Research Scientist at CSIRO-Manufacturing. She holds a Master in Analytical Chemistry from RMIT University and a PhD in Chemical Engineering in Fibre Science from Monash University. She has been working in the fabrication of electrospun nanofibres for a range of applications and has published over 65 peer-reviewed papers in this area. She chaired the Inaugural International Conference on Electrospinning (Electrospin 2010) in Melbourne, Australia, in 2010.