Separation media, separation modules and methods are provided for separating water from a water and hydrocarbon emulsion and include a fibrous nonwoven coalescence layer for receiving the water and hydrocarbon emulsion and coalescing the water present therein as a discontinuous phase to achieve coalesced water droplets having a size of 1 mm or greater, and a fibrous nonwoven drop retention layer downstream of the coalescence layer having a high BET surface area of at least 90 m2/g or greater sufficient to retain the size of the coalesced water droplets to allow separation thereof from the hydrocarbon.