Constructing composite membranes from functionalized metal organic frameworks integrated MXene intended for ultrafast oil/water emulsion separation

Industrial development resulted to an increase in discharge of hazardous oily wastewater with multi-component, which gravely threatens human health and the ecosystem. This is a huge challenge ushered in membrane technology. Recently, two-dimensional material, MXene has been demonstrated as a potential candidate for the construction of functional membranes. A novel TA-ZIF-8@MXene metal–organic framework (MOF) composite membrane has been fabricated and exploited for oily wastewater treatment. The composite membrane (T-M4) exhibited an excellent water flux (5347.36 L·m −2 ·h −1 ) after the incorporation of ZIF-8 modified by tannic acid (TA) nanoparticles. Moreover, the MOF-MXene composite membrane possessed an excellent chemical stability and high oil/water emulsion separation performance. The experimental results showed that the rejection ratios of T-M4 composite membrane for three different oil/water emulsions reached more than 98%. Furthermore, the chemically stable TA-ZIF-8@MXene/CA composite membrane showed an excellent performance having more than 84% flux recovery ratio (FRR) during multi-cycle oil/water emulsion filtration with neutral, acidic, alkaline, and salty media. In addition, molecular dynamics simulations were used to reveal the separation mechanism of the composite membrane. The investigation successfully applied MXene membrane materials to micron-level separation, which provided the reference for the application of MXene in O/W separation.