A facile method for separating fine water droplets dispersed in oil through a pre-wetted mesh membrane
JiEun Park,
Seunghan Kang,
EunSol Park,
Dongho Lee,
Jeasung Park,
Donghun Kim,
Siyoung Q. Choi,
KyuHan Kim
Affiliations
JiEun Park
Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, Seoul National University of Science and Technology (SeoulTech), Seoul 01811, Republic of Korea
Seunghan Kang
Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, KAIST, Daejeon 34141, Republic of Korea
EunSol Park
Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, Seoul National University of Science and Technology (SeoulTech), Seoul 01811, Republic of Korea
Dongho Lee
Process R&D center, Hanwha solutions R&D institute, Daejeon 34128, Republic of Korea
Jeasung Park
Green and sustainable materials R&D department, Korea institute of industrial technology (KITECH), Cheonan 31056, Republic of Korea
Donghun Kim
School of Chemical Engineering, Chonnam National University, Gwangju 61186, Republic of Korea; Corresponding author
Siyoung Q. Choi
Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, KAIST, Daejeon 34141, Republic of Korea; Corresponding author
KyuHan Kim
Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, Seoul National University of Science and Technology (SeoulTech), Seoul 01811, Republic of Korea; Corresponding author
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.
