Development of poly(vinyl alcohol)/β-cyclodextrin/P(MVE-MA) composite nanofibers as effective and selective adsorbent and filtration material for the removal and separation of cationic dyes from water

Abstract

The preparation of new smart adsorbent and filtration materials has a great importance for the adsorption and filtration studies. In this study, for the effective adsorption of cationic Basic Yellow 2 (BY2) dye from water and for the selective separation of anionic dye from the anionic and cationic dye mixture solution, a new water-insoluble negatively charged poly(vinyl alcohol) (PVA)/β-cyclodextrin/poly(methyl vinyl ether-alt-maleic anhydride) (P(MVE-MA)) nanofiber membrane was fabricated by using simple electrospinning technique and thermal cross-linking process. The obtained nanofiber composite membrane material was characterized by FTIR, water solubility, mechanical property, SEM, BET specific surface area and pore size distribution measurements. After cross-linking process, maximum tensile stress and Young's modulus of membrane material showed an enhancement from 1.59 MPa to 2.58 MPa and from 66.67 MPa to 146.75 MPa, respectively. For cationic BY2 dye, membrane material exhibited an excellent adsorption capacity value of 2.554 × 10−3 mol g−1 or 775.98 mg g−1. In addition, it did not adsorb anionic Acid Blue 74 (AB74) dye. Kinetic and isotherm data of BY2 followed the pseudo second order and Langmuir models, respectively. For BY2 dye, membrane material displayed a good regeneration performance during the five adsorption/desorption cycles. In the filtration of anionic and cationic dye mixture, PVA/β-cyclodextrin/P(MVE-MA) nanofiber membrane material exhibited a remarkable separation efficiency (99.33%) and showed selective adsorption ability toward cationic BY2 dye. In brief, the fabricated membrane material is of a promising application in the water treatments and separation studies.