Engineering Surface Wettability of Pyrolyzed Nano‐Silicon Carbide/Alumina Composite Ceramic Membranes: Fabrication, Characterization, and Their Application

Abstract This study carried out the decoration of silicon carbide (SiC) nanoparticles on ceramic alumina support using a polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) and glutaraldehyde (GA) network to develop an efficient membrane for treating real‐produced water (PW). This was achieved by using cycles of dip‐coating of SiC‐PVA/GA followed by pyrolysis, resulting in a uniform and continuous growth of the SiC/C active layer on the ceramic support. The resultant SiC‐PVA/GA@Alumina membranes exhibited unique surface wettability behavior, being super‐hydrophilic in air and super‐oleophobic underwater. The surface functionalities and morphological analysis indicated the successful growth of the pyrolyzed SiC/C active layer on the ceramic alumina support. The effect of varying the cycles of dip‐coating and pyrolysis on the membrane performance was also studied, and the membranes were labeled as P‐nC‐SiC‐PVA/GA@Alumina. Among the various fabricated membranes, the P‐2C‐SiC‐PVA/GA@Alumina exhibited a super‐hydrophilic character with a water contact angle in air (θ A, W ) of ∼4° and a super‐oleophobic surface with an underwater oil contact angle (θ O, W ) of ∼151.4°. As a result, the P‐2C‐SiC‐PVA/GA@Alumina membrane displayed a maximum rejection of total organic carbon (TOC) reaching 83.6% with a flux of 65.8 L m −2 h −1 at 1.2 bar. In comparison, the non‐pyrolyzed P‐2C‐PVA/GA@Alumina membrane demonstrated a flux of 150 L m −2 h −1 with a corresponding TOC rejection of 15.9%. Hence, the current study presents an efficient and simple approach to successfully decorate nanoparticles on a ceramic support, yielding an effective membrane with special surface wettability features for the sustainable treatment of real produced water (PW).