Environmentally friendly electrospun polycaprolactone bio-membrane fabrication for water distillation

Abstract

Eco-friendly biodegradable polycaprolactone (PCL) membranes were fabricated at different polymer concentrations: 10, 12, and 14 wt% via the electrospinning technique. The membrane's fiber and average pore diameters of various fabricated nanofiber membranes were measured using SEM associated with ImageJ software. The polymer concentration of 10 wt% showed beaded nanofibers compared with 12, and 14 wt% showed bead-free nanofiber structures. Accordingly, the morphological structure, hydrophilicity, chemical structure, and mechanical properties of the two uniform nanofiber membranes of 12 and 14 wt% were compared. The analyses demonstrated that the prepared 12 wt% PCL membrane recorded the most uniform average nanofiber diameter and pore diameter of 328 nm and 0.45 μm, respectively. The contact angle of this fabricated nanofiber was recorded as 118.8°, suggesting its suitability as a hydrophobic membrane for membrane distillation. The PCL membrane's performance in a direct contact membrane distillation (DCMD) system was examined. The membrane showed increased flux that reached about 41.9 kg·m−2·h−1and salt rejection (>94%) at 50 °C feed inlet temperature, 10 °C permeate temperature, 6 L/h feed flow rate, and 10,000 ppm NaCl feed inlet concentration.