Continuous, High-Speed, and Efficient Oil/Water Separation using Meshes with Antagonistic Wetting Properties

We report a novel oil/water separation device, allowing continuous, high-speed, and highly efficient purification of large volumes of oily water. This device uses a pair of hydrophilic/hydrophobic polymer-brush-functionalized stainless steel meshes, which have antagonistic wetting properties, i.e., superoleophobic and superhydrophobic properties, when submerged in the opposite liquid phase. This device can purify large volumes of n-hexadecane/water mixture (∼1000 L) in a continuous process rather than in batches, to high purities (∼99.9% mol/mol) at high flow rates (∼5 mL s^–1 cm^–2), unlike the oil/water separation meshes reported so far.