Carbon Nanotube Enhanced Filtration and Dewatering of Kerosene

Sumona Paul, Mitun Chandra Bhoumick, Sagar Roy, Somenath Mitra

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

3 Scopus citations

Abstract

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.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Article number621
JournalMembranes
Volume12
Issue number6
DOIs
StatePublished - Jun 2022

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • Chemical Engineering (miscellaneous)
  • Process Chemistry and Technology
  • Filtration and Separation

Keywords

  • carbon nanotubes
  • dewatering
  • filtration
  • fuel-water system
  • hydrophobic

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