TY - JOUR
T1 - Carbon Nanotube Enhanced Filtration and Dewatering of Kerosene
AU - Paul, Sumona
AU - Bhoumick, Mitun Chandra
AU - Roy, Sagar
AU - Mitra, Somenath
N1 - Funding Information:
Funding: This study was partially supported by a grant from the Chemical, Bioengineering, Environmental, and Transport Systems Division, National Science Foundation (CBET-1603314).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.
PY - 2022/6
Y1 - 2022/6
N2 - Current approaches to dewatering aviation fuel such as kerosene are adsorption by acti-vated charcoal, gravity separation, etc. The objective of this work is to develop and demonstrate the filtration and dewatering of kerosene using a carbon nanotube immobilised membrane (CNIM). Highly hydrophobic membranes were prepared by immobilising carbon nanotube (CNTs) over polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) and polyvinylidene difluoride (PVDF) microfiltration membrane for the dewatering of ppm level water from kerosene. The effects of different CNT concentrations on membrane morphology, hydrophobicity, porosity, and permeability were characterised. After immobilising CNT into membranes, the contact angle increased by 9%, 16%, and 43% compared to unmodified 0.1 µm PTFE, 0.22 µm PTFE and 0.22 µm PVDF membranes, respectively. The CNIM showed remarkable separation efficiency for the fuel-water system. The micro/nano water droplets coalesced on the CNT surface to form larger diameters of water droplets detached from the membrane surface, leading to enhanced water rejection. In general, the water rejection increased with the amount of CNT immobilised while the effective surface porosity over pore length and flux decreased. PTFE base membrane showed better performance compared to the PVDF substrate. The CNIMs were fabricated with 0.1 and 0.22 µm PTFE at an optimised CNT loading of 3 and 6 wt.%, and the water rejection was 99.97% and 97.27%, respectively, while the kerosene fluxes were 43.22 kg/m2·h and 55.44 kg/m2·h respectively.
AB - Current approaches to dewatering aviation fuel such as kerosene are adsorption by acti-vated charcoal, gravity separation, etc. The objective of this work is to develop and demonstrate the filtration and dewatering of kerosene using a carbon nanotube immobilised membrane (CNIM). Highly hydrophobic membranes were prepared by immobilising carbon nanotube (CNTs) over polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) and polyvinylidene difluoride (PVDF) microfiltration membrane for the dewatering of ppm level water from kerosene. The effects of different CNT concentrations on membrane morphology, hydrophobicity, porosity, and permeability were characterised. After immobilising CNT into membranes, the contact angle increased by 9%, 16%, and 43% compared to unmodified 0.1 µm PTFE, 0.22 µm PTFE and 0.22 µm PVDF membranes, respectively. The CNIM showed remarkable separation efficiency for the fuel-water system. The micro/nano water droplets coalesced on the CNT surface to form larger diameters of water droplets detached from the membrane surface, leading to enhanced water rejection. In general, the water rejection increased with the amount of CNT immobilised while the effective surface porosity over pore length and flux decreased. PTFE base membrane showed better performance compared to the PVDF substrate. The CNIMs were fabricated with 0.1 and 0.22 µm PTFE at an optimised CNT loading of 3 and 6 wt.%, and the water rejection was 99.97% and 97.27%, respectively, while the kerosene fluxes were 43.22 kg/m2·h and 55.44 kg/m2·h respectively.
KW - carbon nanotubes
KW - dewatering
KW - filtration
KW - fuel-water system
KW - hydrophobic
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U2 - 10.3390/membranes12060621
DO - 10.3390/membranes12060621
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85132786952
SN - 2077-0375
VL - 12
JO - Membranes
JF - Membranes
IS - 6
M1 - 621
ER -