Oil-fouling on surfaces which happens during oil production and transportation has been a detrimental problem in industries. Here, we fabricated lubricant-impregnated surfaces (LIS) and investigated their anti-oil fouling performance at a wide range o...
Oil-fouling on surfaces which happens during oil production and transportation has been a detrimental problem in industries. Here, we fabricated lubricant-impregnated surfaces (LIS) and investigated their anti-oil fouling performance at a wide range of operating temperature (20~90℃). Two types of lubricant oils which have different chemical components were impregnated into SAM-coated CuO nanostructures. The oil-fouling tests were conducted in a temperature-controlled oil-fouling experimental setup, and the performance was characterized by measuring mass of adhered fouling on the surfaces. LIS showed the best anti-oil-fouling performance. The operating temperature significantly changed the size of the emulsion and it resulted in various oil-fouling results of the other surfaces. However, the lubricant oil layer on LIS effectively prevented any crystallization of the emulsions and provided almost steady good anti-oil fouling ability at a wide range of operating temperature. The adhesion strength between the emulsion and the surfaces was analyzed to understand the different anti-oil fouling performance, and the effect of the types of the impregnated oils on LIS was investigated by using thermodynamical energy criteria. We believe that our works help to understand the role of the surface wettabilities during oil fouling process and offer a guideline to fabricate stable LIS for oil-fouling applications.