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Surface Engineering of Ceramic Nanomaterials for Separation of Oil/Water Mixtures

Oil/water mixtures are a potentially major source of environmental pollution if efficient separation technology is not employed during processing. A large volume of oil/water mixtures is produced via many manufacturing operations in food, petrochemical, mining, and metal industries and can be expose...

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Autores principales: Zulfiqar, Usama, Thomas, Andrew G., Matthews, Allan, Lewis, David J.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7711160/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33330349
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fchem.2020.00578
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author Zulfiqar, Usama
Thomas, Andrew G.
Matthews, Allan
Lewis, David J.
author_facet Zulfiqar, Usama
Thomas, Andrew G.
Matthews, Allan
Lewis, David J.
author_sort Zulfiqar, Usama
collection PubMed
description Oil/water mixtures are a potentially major source of environmental pollution if efficient separation technology is not employed during processing. A large volume of oil/water mixtures is produced via many manufacturing operations in food, petrochemical, mining, and metal industries and can be exposed to water sources on a regular basis. To date, several techniques are used in practice to deal with industrial oil/water mixtures and oil spills such as in situ burning of oil, bioremediation, and solidifiers, which change the physical shape of oil as a result of chemical interaction. Physical separation of oil/water mixtures is in industrial practice; however, the existing technologies to do so often require either dissipation of large amounts of energy (such as in cyclones and hydrocyclones) or large residence times or inventories of fluids (such as in decanters). Recently, materials with selective wettability have gained attention for application in separation of oil/water mixtures and surfactant stabilized emulsions. For example, a superhydrophobic material is selectively wettable toward oil while having a poor affinity for the aqueous phase; therefore, a superhydrophobic porous material can easily adsorb the oil while completely rejecting the water from an oil/water mixture, thus physically separating the two components. The ease of separation, low cost, and low-energy requirements are some of the other advantages offered by these materials over existing practices of oil/water separation. The present review aims to focus on the surface engineering aspects to achieve selectively wettability in materials and its their relationship with the separation of oil/water mixtures with particular focus on emulsions, on factors contributing to their stability, and on how wettability can be helpful in their separation. Finally, the challenges in application of superwettable materials will be highlighted, and potential solutions to improve the application of these materials will be put forward.
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spelling pubmed-77111602020-12-15 Surface Engineering of Ceramic Nanomaterials for Separation of Oil/Water Mixtures Zulfiqar, Usama Thomas, Andrew G. Matthews, Allan Lewis, David J. Front Chem Chemistry Oil/water mixtures are a potentially major source of environmental pollution if efficient separation technology is not employed during processing. A large volume of oil/water mixtures is produced via many manufacturing operations in food, petrochemical, mining, and metal industries and can be exposed to water sources on a regular basis. To date, several techniques are used in practice to deal with industrial oil/water mixtures and oil spills such as in situ burning of oil, bioremediation, and solidifiers, which change the physical shape of oil as a result of chemical interaction. Physical separation of oil/water mixtures is in industrial practice; however, the existing technologies to do so often require either dissipation of large amounts of energy (such as in cyclones and hydrocyclones) or large residence times or inventories of fluids (such as in decanters). Recently, materials with selective wettability have gained attention for application in separation of oil/water mixtures and surfactant stabilized emulsions. For example, a superhydrophobic material is selectively wettable toward oil while having a poor affinity for the aqueous phase; therefore, a superhydrophobic porous material can easily adsorb the oil while completely rejecting the water from an oil/water mixture, thus physically separating the two components. The ease of separation, low cost, and low-energy requirements are some of the other advantages offered by these materials over existing practices of oil/water separation. The present review aims to focus on the surface engineering aspects to achieve selectively wettability in materials and its their relationship with the separation of oil/water mixtures with particular focus on emulsions, on factors contributing to their stability, and on how wettability can be helpful in their separation. Finally, the challenges in application of superwettable materials will be highlighted, and potential solutions to improve the application of these materials will be put forward. Frontiers Media S.A. 2020-11-19 /pmc/articles/PMC7711160/ /pubmed/33330349 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fchem.2020.00578 Text en Copyright © 2020 Zulfiqar, Thomas, Matthews and Lewis. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Chemistry
Zulfiqar, Usama
Thomas, Andrew G.
Matthews, Allan
Lewis, David J.
Surface Engineering of Ceramic Nanomaterials for Separation of Oil/Water Mixtures
title Surface Engineering of Ceramic Nanomaterials for Separation of Oil/Water Mixtures
title_full Surface Engineering of Ceramic Nanomaterials for Separation of Oil/Water Mixtures
title_fullStr Surface Engineering of Ceramic Nanomaterials for Separation of Oil/Water Mixtures
title_full_unstemmed Surface Engineering of Ceramic Nanomaterials for Separation of Oil/Water Mixtures
title_short Surface Engineering of Ceramic Nanomaterials for Separation of Oil/Water Mixtures
title_sort surface engineering of ceramic nanomaterials for separation of oil/water mixtures
topic Chemistry
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7711160/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33330349
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fchem.2020.00578
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