Recently, oil/water separation has become a crucial process due to ever-increasing industrial oily wastewater (hexane, petroleum ether and etc.) and frequent oil spill accident, which have long-term and fatal effects on the ecosystem. Notably, oil separates into small droplet sizes of < 20 µm instead of existing in the bulk phase so that conventional treatments have difficulties handling such forms of emulsion. In order to address the problem, a novel membrane has to be developed with the following requirements: (i) the membrane must achieve high permeate flux with high porosity; (ii) the membrane must be endowed with a submicron pore in order to intercept the tiny drop of emulsion; and (iii) the membrane must possess anti-oil properties.
