Abstract
Efficient filtration of particulate matter (PM) is the major goal for various air cleaning technologies. However, most existing air filters are conducted at room temperature with a relative humidity (RH) of around 45%, ignoring the fact that many operate under high temperature and RH above 90%. Herein, we report the successful fabrication of a polyetherimide (PEI)/zeolitic imidazolate framework-67 (PEI/ZIF-67) nanofibrous membranes using electrospinning technology, which showed steady and high efficiency PM filtration performance under a high temperature of 200 °C and RH of 90%. Compared with pure PEI nanofibrous membranes, the resultant nanofibrous membranes containing 2 wt% of ZIF-67 showed an increase of 112% and 109% in removal efficiency of PM2.5 and PM10, respectively, which are attributed to synergistic effects of enhanced surface roughness, strengthened electrostatic interaction and small pore size by the introduction of the ZIF-67. More importantly, after operating under a high RH of 90% over 70 h, the removal efficiency of such PEI/ZIF-67 nanofibrous membranes remained almost unchanged. Density functional theory calculations suggested that the ZIF could efficiently reduce water adsorption and thereby avoid the PEI being damaged by water. Such a finding demonstrated that the ZIFs should be promising candidates for designing highly stable nanofibrous membranes under extremely high RH and high temperature conditions.
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