Fabrication of polyamide-6 electrospunnanofiber mat coated with polyanilineas a membrane for separation of oil in water emulsion

The separation of oil and water is a worldwide challenge due to the ever-increasing amount of oily industrial wastewater and polluted oceanic waters, as well as the increasing frequency of oil spill accidents. As the leader of advanced fibrous materials, electrospunnano fibers combine the properties of tunable wettability, large surface area, high porosity, fine flexibility, and ease of scalable synthesis,have a great potential for the separation of oily wastewater.Herein, we successfully fabricated superhydrophilic-superoleophobic membranes by depositing doped polyaniline (PANI) on the surface of electrospun polyamide-6(PA6) nanofibers mat by in situ polymerization method.The coated mat was applied in the separation of oil/water mixtures and non surfactant oil in water emulsion with the designed separation setup under the different pressures (from 0.1-1 bar). The newly designed PA6/PANI membranes can effectively separate oil-water mixtures and oil in water emulsion with a high separation efficiency ( 95%) and good water flux(100 L.m2.h-1) thus possess great potential for oil–water separation.