Flower-like visible light driven antifouling membrane with robust regeneration for high efficient oil/water separation

Oily wastewater has increasing in recent decades due to industrial production and domestic wastewater. Conventional techniques for oil/water separation such as adsorption, magnetic and combustion suffer from high cost, low efficiency and low regenerability, especially, a large number of oil droplets are embedded in the inner of the membrane, blocking the hole of the membrane so that the membrane cannot be reused. To solve these problems, we synthesized a flower-like visible light driven antifouling membrane, the resultant membrane manifested excellent superhydrophilicity with WCA was 0^° and underwater superoleophobicity with underwater OCA was 158^° More importantly, the developed membrane exhibited a favorable separation efficiency of 99.5% to separate a serious of oil/water mixtures. Remarkably, the membrane presented superior antifouling performance which maintained separation efficiency of 99% under visible driven even after 140 oil/water separations cycles. The avant-garde membrane was investigated in the work hope to become a promising candidate for oil/water separation.