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Cellulose membranes via a top-down approach from loofah for oil/water separation

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Abstract

Degradable materials have been used for the preparation of oil-water separation membranes, especially cellulose-based membranes. However, the extraction of cellulose nanofibers is time, energy, and chemically intensive and the source of cellulose is mainly wood, bamboo, cotton, and flax. Herein, we report a top-down approach for the scalable production of structurally asymmetric composite cellulose membranes from loofah. The tear strength of the membrane was 388.7% times of the PVDF membrane and the preparation cost was only 3.3% of the price of commercially available nitrocellulose membrane. A superhydrophobic renewable and degradable cellulose membrane with a surface water contact angle of 152.3°can be prepared by a one-step method using the cellulose membrane as a substrate and dodecyltriethoxysilane as a modifier. The superhydrophobic cellulose membrane could separate oil and water by continuous filtration with high efficiency (98.1%) and high flux (2349Lm-2h-1). Such a simple and low-cost method could promote the popularity of separation membranes.

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Funding

The authors profusely thank the Natural Science Foundation of China [grant number 51776070], and the State Grid Science and Technology Program [SGGNSW00YWJS2100024].

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. National Engineering Laboratory for Biomass Power Generation Equipment, School of New Energy, North China Electric Power University, Beijing, 102206, China

    Tong Xing, Changqing Dong, Xiaoying Hu, Ying Zhao, Junjie Xue & Xiaoqiang Wang

  2. State Key Laboratory of Alternate Electrical Power System with Renewable Energy Sources, North China Electric Power University, Beijing, 102206, China

    Changqing Dong

  3. Beijing Aerospace Petrochemical EC and EP Technology Corporation Limited, Beijing, 100176, China

    Quanjun Zheng

  4. School of Energy, Power and Mechanical Engineering, North China Electric Power University, Beijing, 102206, China

    Junjiao Zhang

Authors
  1. Tong Xing
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Contributions

Changqing Dong and Xiaoying Hu contributed to conceptualization and methodology. Tong Xing contributed to the investigation, data analysis, and writing the original draft and all other authors contribute to the review, editing, and preparation of the final draft. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Changqing Dong.

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Xing, T., Dong, C., Hu, X. et al. Cellulose membranes via a top-down approach from loofah for oil/water separation. Biomass Conv. Bioref. (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13399-023-03766-0

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