Scale-Up Fabrication of Fiber Membrane Based on Nanoporous Polyurea Colloids for Organic Solvents/Water Separation

Membranes embedded with nanoparticles, especially with porous organic polymers (POPs) possessing high specific surface area and strong sorption of organic/inorganic pollutants, are gaining tremendous attention in saline or wastewater treatment considering the lower energy burden and the improving environmental sustainability. However, the commercial development of the materials has been obstructed by challenges of the scale-up fabrication of low-cost and high-performance membranes. Here, a POP membrane embedded with nanoporous polyurea colloids (PUCs) by using an electrospun technique is demonstrated. Large-scale production of PUCs is implemented through one-pot synthesis, which presents an ultrahigh yield of up to 20 wt %. The designed POP membrane exhibits an excellent adsorption capacity (19.8 g·g–1) of highly viscous silicone oil and displays superb potential for the removal of organic solvents, dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO) (adsorption capacity as high as 24.6 g·g–1), from solvent streams. It shows a high rejection rate of up to 75% with an extremely high flux of 19.15 L·m–2·h–1 in the separation of the DMSO/water stream, and the rejection rate still maintains at 73% after the 5-cycle process. The fabrication strategy of the POP membrane establishes a scalable and generalized approach to obtain a low-cost nanofiltration membrane with excellent separation efficiency for a vast potential for fluid separations.