Robust and Self-Cleaning Fluorine-Free Superhydrophobic PPS Filters for High-Humidity Flue Gas Filtration

Abstract In industrial flue gas treatment, wet dust and liquid contamination increase system energy consumption and significantly shorten filter media lifespan. Developing fluorine-free filters with stable antifouling properties remains challenging because of weak coating–substrate bonding and insufficient functional durability. Here, by combining surface activation with a light-induced covalent bonding strategy, a robust antifouling coating composed of a triple-cross-linked network structure was constructed on the surface of polyphenylene sulfide fiber membranes, resulting in a fluorine-free antifouling filter medium with stable filtration and effective dust removal performance. The synergistic design of low surface energy and micro/nanoroughness structures endows the antifouling filter media with stable self-cleaning and antiadhesion properties against wet dust and contaminants, thereby facilitating pulse-energy transfer and dust removal during the pulse-jet cleaning process. Compared with the unmodified filter medium, this antifouling filter medium exhibits a longer average cleaning cycle (550.84 s), lower average residual pressure drop (280.69 Pa), and higher quality factor (0.044 Pa–1) in simulated industrial dynamic filtration tests, indicating improved filtration and cleaning performance. This work provides mechanistic insights into the design of fluorine-free antifouling filter media and demonstrates the performance of the developed filter media under standardized humid-dust filtration and pulse-cleaning conditions.