UV-Cured PDMS for Oil Removal from Wastewater

The removal of oil from water is a worldwide challenge that must be faced to avoid irreversible marine habitat destruction. A novel fast and simple technique to obtain polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) membranes is developed using the photopolymerization technique. The high reactivity of the acrylated PDMS formulation toward photo-induced free radical polymerization is assessed via the differential scanning photo-calorimetry (photo-DSC) technique. Two different membranes dense or porous are developed and investigated. Porous membranes, having 100–200 µm as pore size, are obtained using a low-cost environmentally friendly sodium chloride template. Thanks to the hydrophobic/oleophilic intrinsic characteristic of PDMS, the UV-cured membranes can selectively remove dodecane, selected as the target oil, from water. The dodecane sorption capability of both membranes is investigated and compared. Moreover, the membranes can be easily reused since the adsorbed oil can be recovered by simply compressing the membrane. Those PDMS sorbents show high mechanical stability after five adsorption/desorption cycles.