Highly dispersed and stable nano zero-valent iron doped electrospun carbon nanofiber composite for aqueous hexavalent chromium removal

Qijian Niu; Meili Liu; Longyang Fang; Yangyang Yu; Liang Cheng; Tianyan You

doi:10.1039/d2ra00193d

Highly dispersed and stable nano zero-valent iron doped electrospun carbon nanofiber composite for aqueous hexavalent chromium removal

RSC Adv. 2022 Mar 15;12(13):8178-8187. doi: 10.1039/d2ra00193d. eCollection 2022 Mar 8.

Authors

Qijian Niu¹, Meili Liu², Longyang Fang², Yangyang Yu², Liang Cheng^{2

3}, Tianyan You¹

Affiliations

¹ Key Laboratory of Modern Agriculture Equipment and Technology, School of Agricultural Engineering, Jiangsu University Zhenjiang Jiangsu 212013 China youty@ujs.edu.cn.
² School of Environment and Safety Engineering, Jiangsu University Zhenjiang Jiangsu 212013 China clcheng@ujs.edu.cn.
³ School of Civil and Mechanical Engineering, Curtin University Perth 6102 Australia.

Abstract

In this work, a nZVI doped electrospun carbon nanofiber (nZVI-CNF) composite was prepared and applied for aqueous hexavalent chromium (Cr(vi)) removal. Firstly, FeCl₃/PAN nanofibers were prepared by a simple electrospinning method; Then, nZVI-CNFs were obtained by carbonization of FeCl₃/PAN nanofibers at 800 °C. The surface morphology and internal structure of nZVI-CNFs were characterized by SEM and TEM, showing that the uniformly dispersed nZVI particles were well integrated into the carbon layer structure. The Cr(vi) removal efficiency of nZVI-CNFs was 91.5% with a Cr(vi) concentration of 10 mg L^-1 and the mechanism was further studied by XRD and XPS. Meanwhile, the nZVI-CNFs exhibited good stability over a wide range of pH values from 4-8 and a long time placement stability. Furthermore, nZVI-CNFs can be used as a filter membrane for continuous treatment of wastewater, suggesting great potential for practical application.