Tungsten incorporated mobil-type eleven zeolite membranes: Facile synthesis and tuneable wettability for highly efficient separation of oil/water mixtures

Tungsten (W) incorporated mobil-type eleven (MEL) zeolite membrane (referred to as W-MEL membrane) with high separation performance was firstly explored for the separation of oil/water mixtures under the influence of gravity.W-MEL membranes were grown on stainless steel (SS) meshes through in-situ hydrothermal growth method facilitated with (3-aminopropyl)triethoxysilane (APTES) modification of stainless steel meshes,which promote the heterogeneous nucleation and crystal growth of W-MEL zeolites onto the mesh surface.W-MEL membranes were grown on different mesh size supports to investigate the effect of mesh size on the separation performance of the membrane.The assynthesized W-MEL membrane supported on 500 mesh (25μm)(W-MEL-500) exhibit the hydrophilic nature with a water contact angle of 11.8°and delivers the best hexane/water mixture separation with a water flux and separation efficiency of 46247 L·m^(-2)·h^(-1)and 99.5%,respectively.The wettability of W-MEL membranes was manipulated from hydrophilic to hydrophobic nature by chemically modifying with the fluorine-free compounds (hexadecyltrimethoxysilane (HDTMS) and dodecyltrimethoxysilane(DDTMS)) to achieve efficient oil-permselective separation of heavy oils from water.Among the hydrophobically modified W-MEL membranes,W-MEL-500-HDTMS having a water contact angle of146.4°delivers the best separation performance for dichloromethane/water mixtures with a constant oil flux and separation efficiency of 61490 L·m^(-2)·h^(-1)and 99.2%,respectively along with the stability tested up to 20 cycles.Both W-MEL-500-HDTMS and W-MEL-500-DDTMS membranes also exhibit similar separation performances for the separation of heavy oil from sea water along with a 20-fold lower corrosion rate in comparison with the bare stainless-steel mesh,indicating their excellent stability in seawater.Compared to the reported zeolite membranes for oil/water separation,the as-synthesized and hydrophobically modified W-MEL membranes shows competitive separation performances in terms of flux and separation efficiency,demonstrating the good potentiality for oil/water separation.