Blending Electrostatic Spinning Fabrication of Superhydrophilic/Underwater Superoleophobic Polysulfonamide/Polyvinylpyrrolidone Nanofibrous Membranes for Efficient Oil–Water Emulsion Separation

The scarcity of water resources has led to widespread interest in the treatment of oily wastewater. This study prepared a novel superhydrophilic/underwater superoleophobic polysulfonamide (PSA)/polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP) nanofibrous membrane through electrostatic spinning for efficient oil-water emulsion separation. The surface morphology, fiber diameter distribution, wettability properties, and oil-water emulsion separation performance of the membranes were investigated. Results showed that the addition of PVP increases the diameter of the fibers, which led to a loose, large, porous structure and improved the permeability of the membranes. A high pure-water flux of 2057 L·m-2·h-1 was obtained for membranes with PVP addition of 3 wt%, providing an 835% increase in pure-water flux compared with a pure PSA nanofibrous membrane (220 L·m-2·h-1). For n-hexane-in-water emulsions, the optimum membrane obtained a high separation efficiency of 99.7%, in which flux was 1.5 times greater than that of the pure PSA nanofibrous membrane. Moreover, the optimum membrane exhibited good recycling stability and solvent resistance. The as-prepared PSA/PVP nanofibrous membrane displayed high permeability, an outstanding rejection rate, resistance to organic solvents, and reusability for oil-water separation, providing great potential in practical membrane separation applications.