Omniphobic Hollow Fiber Membranes for Water Recovery and Desalination

Abstract

Despite remarkable progress in developing wetting-resistant membranes for the desalination of challenging water resources through membrane distillation, practical approaches that allow for the fabrication of wetting-resistant hollow fiber membranes (HFMs) are not yet available. Here we demonstrate the feasibility of using a semicontinuous bottom-up technique to create omniphobic HFMs. The omniphobic HFM showed stable performance in the desalination of low-surface-tension saline solutions during a prolonged (>42 h) direct-contact membrane distillation test. Additionally, compared with polyvinylidene fluoride hollow fibers, we note a ∼71% reduction in salt scaling for the omniphobic HFMs.