A facile method for separating fine water droplets dispersed in oil through a pre-wetted mesh membrane

Summary: To achieve the successful separation of emulsions containing fine dispersed droplets and low volume fractions, a membrane with pore sizes comparable to or smaller than the droplet size is typically required. Although this approach is effective, its utilization is limited to the separation o...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: JiEun Park, Seunghan Kang, EunSol Park, Dongho Lee, Jeasung Park, Donghun Kim, Siyoung Q. Choi, KyuHan Kim
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Elsevier 2024-04-01
Series:iScience
Subjects:
Online Access:http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2589004224007788
Description
Summary:Summary: To achieve the successful separation of emulsions containing fine dispersed droplets and low volume fractions, a membrane with pore sizes comparable to or smaller than the droplet size is typically required. Although this approach is effective, its utilization is limited to the separation of emulsions with relatively large droplets. To overcome this limitation, a secondary membrane can be formed on the primary membrane to reduce pore size, but this can also be time-consuming and costly. Therefore, a facile and effective method is still required to be developed for separating emulsions with fine droplets. We introduce a pre-wetted mesh membrane with a pore size significantly larger than droplets, easily fabricated by wetting a hydrophilic stainless-steel mesh with water. Applying this membrane to emulsion separation via gravity-driven flow confirms a high efficiency greater than 98%, even with droplets approximately 10 times smaller than the pore size.
ISSN:2589-0042