Functional flax fiber with UV-induced switchable wettability for multipurpose oil-water separation

Highlights

● A PAA-ZnO-HDTMS flax fiber with UV-induced switchable wettability was developed.

● The property of flax fiber could be switched from hydrophobicity to hydrophilicity.

● The mechanism of the acquired UV-induced switchable wettability was discussed.

● The developed flax fiber was successfully used for multipurpose oil-water separation.

Abstract

The large number of oily wastewater discharges and oil spills are bringing about severe threats to environment and human health. Corresponding to this challenge, a functional PAA-ZnO-HDTMS flax fiber with UV-induced switchable wettability was developed for efficient oil-water separation in this study. The developed flax fiber was obtained through PAA grafted polymerization and then ZnO-HDTMS nanocomposite immobilization. The as-prepared PAA-ZnO-HDTMS flax fiber was hydrophobic initially and could be switched to hydrophilic through UV irradiation. Its hydrophobicity could be easily recovered through being stored in dark environment for several days. To optimize the performance of the PAA-ZnO-HDTMS flax fiber, the effects of ZnO and HDTMS concentrations on its switchable wettability were investigated. The optimized PAA-ZnO-HDTMS flax fiber had a large water contact angle (~130°) in air and an extremely small oil contact angle (~0°) underwater initially. After UV treatment, the water contact angle was decreased to 30°, while the underwater oil contact angle was increased to more than 150°. Based on this UV-induced switchable wettability, the developed PAA-ZnO-HDTMS flax fiber was applied to remove oil from immiscible oil-water mixtures and oil-in-water emulsion with great reusability for multiple cycles. Thus, the developed flax fiber could be further fabricated into oil barrier or oil sorbent for oil-water separation, which could be an environmentally-friendly alternative in oil spill response and oily wastewater treatment.

Graphical abstract

Keywords

Flax fiber / Switchable wettability / ZnO-HDTMS coating / Oil-water separation

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Acknowledgements

This research was supported by the Natural Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada, the Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI) (36668), the Canada Research Chairs Program (CRC), the Western Diversification Program (Canada) (15269), and the Petroleum Technology Research Centre. The authors are particularly thankful to the beamlines of Very Sensitive Elemental and Structural Probe Employing Radiation from a Synchrotron (VESPERS) and Mid Infrared Spectromicroscopy (MID-IR) at Canadian Light Source for providing support in measurements and analysis. Research about XRF and FTIR described in this paper was performed at the Canadian Light Source.

Electronic Supplementary Material

Supplementary material is available in the online version of this article at https://doi.org/10.1007/s11783-022-1588-6 and is accessible for authorized users.

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