Cellulose membranes via a top-down approach from loofah for oil/water separation

Degradable materials have been used for the preparation of oil-water separation membranes, especially cellulose-based membranes. However, the extraction of cellulose nanofibers is time, energy, and chemically intensive and the source of cellulose is mainly wood, bamboo, cotton, and flax. Herein, we report a top-down approach for the scalable production of structurally asymmetric composite cellulose membranes from loofah. The tear strength of the membrane was 388.7% times of the PVDF membrane and the preparation cost was only 3.3% of the price of commercially available nitrocellulose membrane. A superhydrophobic renewable and degradable cellulose membrane with a surface water contact angle of 152.3 degrees can be prepared by a one-step method using the cellulose membrane as a substrate and dodecyltriethoxysilane as a modifier. The superhydrophobic cellulose membrane could separate oil and water by continuous filtration with high efficiency (98.1%) and high flux (2349Lm(-2)h(-1)). Such a simple and low-cost method could promote the popularity of separation membranes.