High-flux ultrafiltration membrane based on electrospun polyacrylonitrile nanofibrous scaffolds for arsenate removal from aqueous solutions

Pegah Bahmani, Afshin Maleki*, Hiua Daraei, Mehrdad Khamforoush, Reza Rezaee, Fardin Gharibi, Alexey G. Tkachev, Alexander E. Burakov, Shilpi Agarwal, Vinod Kumar Gupta

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

56 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Arsenic contamination in drinking water is a serious problem worldwide. In this study, to remove arsenate from contaminated water, a new thin-film composite (TFC) membrane was fabricated and tested. This membrane was composed of an electrospun nanofibrous scaffold, a polyethylene terephthalate (PET) substrate as support, and a polyacrylonitrile (PAN) coating layer. To effectively reject arsenate ions, cetylpyridinium chloride (CPC) pretreatment was used. For evaluating the performance of TFC membrane, its flux and contaminant rejection were compared to a conventional ultrafiltration (UF) membrane. Due to high porosity, the TFC membrane showed a flux, which was 172–520% higher than the UF membrane. In addition, The TFC membrane was 1.1–1.3 times more efficient in rejecting arsenate ions than the UF membrane.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)564-571
Number of pages8
JournalJournal of Colloid and Interface Science
Volume506
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 15 Nov 2017
Externally publishedYes

Keywords

  • Arsenate
  • Nanofiber
  • Polyacrylonitrile
  • Ultrafiltration

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