Fabrication of polyacrylonitrile/β-cyclodextrin/graphene oxide nanofibers composite as an efficient adsorbent for cationic dye

Abstract

This research reported fabrication of hybrid Polyacrylonitrile (PAN)/ β-cyclodextrin (β-CD)/graphene oxide (GO) composite nanofibers materials using the electrospinning technique. The PAN/β-CD/GO nanofibers were electrospun using a different concentrations of GO (1.0–5.0 %) depend of the total weight of PAN/β-CD. Subsequently, the PAN/β-CD/GO nanofibers were characterized by SEM, an optical microscope (OM), XRD, FTIR, TGA, and Raman. Results indicated that various properties of nanofibers were modified upon the addition of different concentrations of GO. The resulted hybrid nanofibers were employed as a membrane for dye removal from aqueous media. The adsorption activity of PAN/β-CD/GO composite nanofibers at different GO concentrations was examined by using crystal violet (CV) as model dye molecules. Results obtained demonstrated that the adsorption process was affected by the concentration of the GO. In addition, the equilibrium and adsorption kinetic behaviors of dye sorption onto the nanofibers were found to conform to a pseudo-second-order kinetics.