A Synthesis and Comparative Study of the Performance of Polyacrylonitrile-Fe2O3 and TiO2 Nanocomposite Membranes for Crude Oil/Water Separation

Abstract

Due to the strong absorption and three-dimensional structure of the 8 wt% PAN-Fe2O3 and PAN-TiO2 nanocomposite films, an aqueous solution polymerization was used to create a photodegradable composite with N-methyl-2-pyrrolidone (NMP) as a crosslinking agent. Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) was used to determine which groups in the composite are active. The contact angles were measured for different concentrations of the 8 wt% PAN-Fe2O3 and PAN-TiO2 nanocomposite films. In addition, a scanning electron microscope (SEM) was used to understand the morphological characteristics of the composites. Gas chromatography (GC) was used to evaluate the efficiency of oil/water separation. The optimal separation time was at 5 min, after which the removal efficiency decreased with the 8 wt% PAN-Fe2O3 concentration. The optimum efficiency of removal was achieved on the PAN-TiO2 surface at 8 wt% concentration and reached to 98% at 10 g/90 ml (10%) crude oil/water concentration, this is due to the high hydrophilic tendency 8 wt% PAN-TiO2 . The nanocomposite membranes with 8 wt% PAN-Fe2O3 and PAN-TiO2, are easy to fabricate, have low component costs, are robust, and offer high performance, which have great potential for industrial-scale applications in the treatment of oily industrial wastewater in harsh environments.