BIODEGRADABLE AND BIOBASED ELECTROSPUN MEMBRANE FOR EFFICIENT WATER IN OIL EMULSIONS SEPARATION

JONATHAN CIMADORO; LAURA RIBBA; SILVIA GOYANES

Stockolm

Conferencia; 7th international Conference on Biobased and Biodegradable Polymers; 2019

The separation of water-in-oil emulsions is one of the main problems to be solved in the fuel oil production industry. [1] In many applications, dispersions of water droplets are very difficult to separate, and affect the final performance of the derived fuels. Conventional methods for the separation of water and oil are useful for the separation of immiscible mixtures, but are not effective for emulsified ones. Demulsification is a complex process based on minimizing or annulling the stability of liquid-liquid colloidal suspensions. Among the most commonly employed techniques used to break emulsions, membrane separation process has remarkable benefits such as: stable effluent quality, absence of extraneous chemicals, high separation efficiency, useful for separation of micron and submicron droplets, compact setting, and lower energy cost than thermal treatments. [2]Functional membranes have been prepared by electrospinning. Electrospun membranes are composed of overlapped nanofibers with diameters that range from micrometers to few nanometers and can achieve special wettability characteristics via synergy between surface chemistry and topology. Recently different researchers have proposed the use of electrospun mats as adsorbents and filtration membranes for oil-water separation applications. [3]Polymeric nanofibrous membranes with pronounced wetting properties have been developed through electrospinning using different polymers. In particular polylactic acid (PLA) changes from a slightly hydrophilic material in the form of a continuous film (contact angle between 65 and 75°) to a strongly hydrophobic one in the form of an electrospun mat (contact angle of around 130°). This polymer has the extra advantage of being biodegradable and obtained completely from renewable resources such as corn. [4]In this work the potential to use a simple eco-friendly electrospun PLA mat highly hydrophobic and highly oleophilic, to selectively and effectively separate oil from both water-oil immiscible mixtures and water in oil emulsions is shown. The manufacturing process is industrially scalable and the final material is completely biodegradable. The produced membranes are applied as main