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A membrane for efficient oil-in-water emulsion separation requires a surface with hydrophilic/underwater oleophobic properties. In this study, a simple and facile sol–gel strategy was proposed for preparing oil-in-water emulsion separation membrane with hydrophilic/underwater oleophobic surface by growing amorphous SiO2 sheets on an electrospun polyacrylonitrile nanofiber membrane (PAN NFM). The composite membranes (PAN@SiO2 NFMs) showed excellent properties in mechanical strength, hierarchical microporous structure, hydrophilicity and underwater oleophobicity, as well as remarkable performance in water flux, separation efficiency and cyclic stability. Under a low pressure of 1 kPa driven by the self-weight of emulsion, the PAN@SiO2 NFM demonstrated a large flux of 3994.3 ± 356.0 L m−2 h−1 and a high separation efficiency of 99.50%. In ten successive cycle tests, fluxes of the PAN@SiO2 NFM remained above 3000 L m−2 h−1, while the residual TOC in filtrate was stable at around 30 mg L−1, indicating the PAN@SiO2 NFM has excellent cyclic stability. It is also demonstrated that the PAN@SiO2 NFM is suitable for the separation of various kinds of emulsions, such as toluene, n-heptane, paraffin liquid, n-hexane and xylene. Hence, the prepared PAN@SiO2 NFM is a promising hydrophilic/underwater oleophobic membrane for efficient emulsion separation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Semiconductor photocatalysis is a promising technology for removing contaminants from water. Particularly, visible-light photocatalysis has attracted much attention because of its potential to utilize solar energy. However, nano-sized visible-light-driven photocatalysts easily aggregate during water treatment. Besides, it is difficult to recycle them from treated systems. Therefore, it is of great importance to develop visible-light-responsive immobilized photocatalysts with high activity. In this work, MWCNTs/Ag3PO4/polyacrylonitrile (PAN) ternary composite fiber membranes (TCFMs) with good photocatalytic performance were fabricated by electrospinning technique combined with in situ Ag3PO4 forming reaction. Due to the addition of MWCNTs, the band gap of MWCNTs/Ag3PO4/PAN TCFMs became narrower than that of Ag3PO4/PAN binary composite fiber membranes (BCFMs), which made MWCNTs/Ag3PO4/PAN TCFMs be able to use light at longer wavelengths. Compared with Ag3PO4/PAN BCFMs, the as-prepared MWCNTs/Ag3PO4/PAN TCFMs showed enhanced photocatalytic activity and stability for degrading rhodamine B (RhB) in batch processing systems, which mainly ascribed to fast electron transfer from Ag3PO4 to MWCNTs and the resulting high electron-hole (e−-h+) separation efficiency. Radical trapping experiments revealed that holes (h+) and superoxide radicals (·O2−) played primary roles in RhB degradation. In addition, the flexible MWCNTs/Ag3PO4/PAN TCFMs also showed potential practical application in the continuous wastewater treatment by a suitable photocatalytic membrane reactor. This work provides a facile approach to prepare flexible supported photocatalytic membrane with visible-light response, high activity and good stability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]