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

doi:10.1016/j.jcis.2017.07.086

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

J Colloid Interface Sci. 2017 Nov 15:506:564-571. doi: 10.1016/j.jcis.2017.07.086. Epub 2017 Jul 24.

Authors

Affiliations

¹ Environmental Health Research Center, Kurdistan University of Medical Sciences, Sanandaj, Iran. Electronic address: pegah_bahmani@yahoo.com.
² Environmental Health Research Center, Kurdistan University of Medical Sciences, Sanandaj, Iran. Electronic address: maleki43@yahoo.com.
³ Environmental Health Research Center, Kurdistan University of Medical Sciences, Sanandaj, Iran. Electronic address: hiua.daraei@gmail.com.
⁴ Faculty of Engineering, University of Kurdistan, Sanandaj, Iran. Electronic address: Mehrdad.khamforoush@gmail.com.
⁵ Environmental Health Research Center, Kurdistan University of Medical Sciences, Sanandaj, Iran. Electronic address: rezaee.eng@gmail.com.
⁶ Environmental Health Research Center, Kurdistan University of Medical Sciences, Sanandaj, Iran. Electronic address: fardin.gharibi1350@yahoo.com.
⁷ Tambov State Technical University, 106, Sovetskaya Str., Tambov 392000, Russia. Electronic address: nanotam@yandex.ru.
⁸ Tambov State Technical University, 106, Sovetskaya Str., Tambov 392000, Russia.
⁹ Department of Applied Chemistry, University of Johannesburg, Johannesburg, South Africa. Electronic address: shilpi.agarwal2307@gmail.com.
¹⁰ Department of Applied Chemistry, University of Johannesburg, Johannesburg, South Africa. Electronic address: vinodg@uj.ac.za.

PMID: 28759856
DOI: 10.1016/j.jcis.2017.07.086

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.

Keywords: Arsenate; Nanofiber; Polyacrylonitrile; Ultrafiltration.