A Self-Cleaning TiO2 Bacterial Cellulose Super-Hydrophilic Underwater Super-Oleophobic Composite Membrane for Efficient Oil-Water Separation.

Due to the increasingly serious problem of offshore oil spills, research related to oil-water separation has attracted more and more attention. Here, we prepared a super-hydrophilic/underwater super-oleophobic membrane (hereinafter referred to as BTA) using poly-dopamine (PDA) to adhesive TiO2 nanoparticles on the surface of bacterial cellulose, coated with sodium alienate by vacuum-assisted filtration technique. This demonstrates its excellent underwater super-oleophobic property. Its contact angle is about 153°. Remarkably, BTA has 99% separation efficiency. More importantly, BTA still showed excellent anti-pollution property under ultraviolet light after 20 cycles. BTA has the advantages of low cost, environmentally friendliness and good anti-fouling performance. We believe it can play an important role in dealing with problems related to oily wastewater.