Designing self-assembled water-stable metal-organic framework membranes for separation of dispersed and emulsified oil from

Water is the fundamental essence of life, and oil has become an integral part of industrialization, development, and societal needs. Both are crucial for the advancement and s...survival of humanity. The oil has become a major environmental and societal concern once it contaminates the water. The oil-producing industries and oil spills majorly contribute to oil contamination in water. Production of one barrel of oil results in an estimated 3 to 10 barrels of produced water. It is a massive quantity of wastewater that contains emulsified and dispersed oil. The reinjecting or discharging of the produced water without proper treatment may contaminate the groundwater and surface water. Ceramic membranes and mesh filters have an excellent potential for treating produced water and oily wastewater. Ceramic membranes provide superior chemical, mechanical, and thermal stability compared to other membranes. The challenge lies in controlling the pore size of ceramic membranes, which results in either poor rejection and extremely high flux rates or high rejection and very low flux rates. Metal-organic frameworks are rapidly emerging as new membrane materials. Initially, metal-organic framework membranes were designed for gas separation due to their instability in water. Due to their intrinsic porosity and production with a range of grain boundaries, MOF materials can be proven highly effective for designing high-performance membranes with high permeability and improved rejection. The major concerns about the MOFs are their stabilization on the support membrane and their water stability. Here, we propose self-assembling the MOFs on ceramic membranes and mesh filters to deal with dispersed and emulsified oil. One interesting strategy is to create MOF-based polycrystalline membranes on a solid substrate using in-situ or self-assembly methods. The dispersed or free oil under pressure can be passed through the ultrafiltration membranes. Therefore, the MOF-based special wettable filters and ceramic membranes would be designed to clean the dispersed or the free oil and the surfactant stabilized emulsified oily droplet from water. For this purpose, MOF would be grown on the surface of the mesh filter, where the metal nodes would be electrochemically generated, which helps to provide the nucleation point for the growth of the MOFs. MOFs can be self-assembled on ceramic membranes using organic moieties and controlled synthetic routes. These designed MOF-based membranes will prove highly effective in treating the oil/water emulsions. The developed MOF-based filters and membranes would help in treating the dispersed oil and the oil/water emulsions.