Recent Progress in Superhydrophilic Carbon-Based Composite Membranes for Oil/Water Emulsion Separation

The purification of stabilized oil/water emulsions is essential to meet the ever increasing demand for monitoring water in the environment, which has been addressed with superwetting carbon-based separation membranes. These include superhydrophilic carbon-based membranes whose progress in recent years and perspectives are reviewed in this paper. The membrane construction strategy is organized into four parts, vacuum-assisted selfassembly, sol-gel process, electrospinning, and vacuum-assisted filtration. In each section, the design strategies and their responding disadvantages have been comprehensively discussed. The challenges and prospects concerning the superhydrophilic carbon-based separation membranes for oily wastewater purification are also summarized to arouse researchers to carry out more studies.

Automated summary

This paper reviews the progress of superhydrophilic carbon-based separation membranes in recent years and introduces four construction strategies of the membranes. The design strategies and their disadvantages are comprehensively discussed, and the challenges and prospects of superhydrophilic carbon-based membranes for oily wastewater purification are summarized to encourage more research in this field.