3D-Printed Hierarchical Ceramic Architecturesfor Ultrafast Emulsion Treatment andSimultaneous Oil-Water Filtration br

There is a critical need for energy-efficient watertreatment processes as the world seeks to limit global warmingbelow 1.5 degrees C. Gravity-driven meshfiltration presents asustainable solution to treating oily wastewater and emulsions,which are byproducts of many human activities. The promise ofa green alternative is getting closer with the development of 3Dprinting combined with reusable, recyclable, and ubiquitousmaterials such as silica to produce durable and recyclablefilterswith controllable mesh spacing. In this work, severalfilters werefabricated to separate oily water mixtures with a separationefficiency of 99% at highflowflux by coating 3D porous ceramicarchitectures with organosilanes. The proposed ceramicfilterscan also treat oil-in-water and water-in-oil surfactant-stabilizedemulsions with highflowflux. This strategy to functionalize the 3D printed silica surface to form either hydrophobic orhydrophilic surfaces can open a new possibility for gravity-driven simultaneous oil-water separation. Thefirst gravity-drivenhierarchical auto-oil-water separator (HAOS) was introduced to separate an oily water mixture into two different containersusing a combination of 3D printed hierarchical hydrophilic and hydrophobicfilters without an additional postseparation step.