Magnetic nano-Fe3O4 stabilized Pickering emulsion liquid membrane for selective extraction and separation

Emulsion liquid membrane (ELM) is a fast, effective and highly selective method for chemical separation, extraction and water treatment. However, an effective and economic method for demulsification after extraction process without changing the oil phase chemistry is still a great challenge, which restricts the commercial application of ELM. Hereby, for the first time, we reported a W/O/W Pickering emulsion liquid membrane (PELM) system in which the internal water in oil emulsion can be simply demulsified by magnetic or centrifugation force without causing obvious change in oil phase chemistry. Practically, we selected 4-methoxyphenol as extracting target in this report, and its extraction efficiency of over 86% was achieved by using surface modified Fe3O4 nanoparticle as the emulsifier.