Oil-in-water emulsions are present in many industrial processes including oil refinery and water treatment. For oil recovery in Alberta, hot steam is used to remove crude oil from the sands, yielding an oil-in-water emulsion. The current separation processes to remove oil from such emulsions is tedious and wasteful of energy and resources. Our group recently reported the use of asymmetric cotton fabrics as filters to practically and efficiently separate oil from surfactant stabilized oil-in-water emulsions. First, polymers are grafted onto different sides of cotton fabrics to yield Janus filters. These asymmetric filters are modified with polymers to be hydrophilic on one side and superhydrophobic on the other. Upon contact with an emulsion, the hydrophilic side causes the oil droplets in water to coalesce and the coalesced oil globules then selectively permeate the superhydrophobic side, leaving the water and surfactant behind. To ensure the greenness of the fabric modification process, water-based formulations have been used to coat fabrics. The formulations have also been used to modify metal meshes and the resultant meshes are then used for crude oil separation. This work explores the interfacial chemistry behind the use of cotton filters for effective oil separation from oil-in-water emulsions for industrial applications.

Practical approaches to modified “smart” fabrics for oil/water separation from stabilized emulsions

256th National Meeting (2018)

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