Superhydrophobic modification of ceramic membranes for vacuum membrane distillation

The hydrophobically modi fied ceramic membranes have great potential for energy-ef ficient membrane distillation.In this work,flat-sheet ceramic membranes with a superhydrophobic surface were fabricated by grafting 1H,1H,2H,2H-per fluorooctyltrichlorosilane or 1H,1H,2H,2H-per fluorodecyltriethoxysilane and followed by ultraviolet irradiation.The surface water contact angle was improved from 46° of original ceramic membrane to 159°,which exhibited a stable and excellent superhydrophobic effect.The modi fied membranes showed a high flux of 27.28 kg·m·hand simultaneously maintained an excellent retention rate of 99.99%,when used in vacuum membrane distillation process for treatment of a 1 wt% NaCl(75 °C) aqueous solution.These results suggested that superhydrophobic modi fication of ceramic surface is a facile and cost-effective way to achieve higher membrane distillation performance.The superhydrophobically-modi fied ceramic membrane with an excellent desalination capacity would show considerable potential in practical membrane distillation utilizations.