Superhydrophobic composite membranes for membrane distillation based on CNTs networks: Overcoming the trade-off between water vapor permeability and wetting resistance

• A superhydrophobic composite membrane based on CNTs network was constructed. • CNTs networks can provide many active sites for perfluorination modification. • CNTs network endows membrane surface with slippery characteristics and reduced surface pore size. • Superhydrophobic composite membranes possess excellent water vapor flux and wetting resistance. Enhancing the wetting resistance of the membrane is crucial for consolidating the stability of the membrane distillation (MD) process, but this generally leads to the decline of water vapor flux. Herein, we developed a superhydrophobic composite membrane composed of a highly hydrophobic polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) porous support layer and a functional superhydrophobic carbon nanotubes (CNTs) network. The CNTs network with high thermal conductivity not only reduces the temperature polarization effect, but also increases the effective evaporation area, thereby enhancing the mass transfer driving force of the MD process. Additionally, the CNTs network significantly reduces the maximum pore radius of the composite membrane, and the perfluorination treatment also reduces the surface energy of the CNTs network, thereby synergistically increasing the liquid entry pressure. The results showed that when treating high salinity water containing 3.5 wt% NaCl, the water vapor flux of the composite membrane increased from 20.0 LMH of the original PVDF membrane to 24.4 LMH, an increase of 22 %. Furthermore, the performance of the original PVDF membrane deteriorates rapidly when the concentration of surfactant in the feed exceeds 1.0 mM, while the composite membrane still maintains a stable water vapor permeability and salt rejection. More importantly, the composite membrane exhibits excellent resistance to wetting induced by gypsum scaling when using gypsum solution as the feed, which is attributed to its small surface pore size and high hydrophobicity. This research supplies new insights into the design of membrane structures used in MD processes to overcome the trade-off between water vapor permeability and wetting resistance.