Preparation of Cu(II)-imprinted nanofibers from co-electrospinning PVA and imprinting complex

Abstract

A novel method to prepare ion-imprinted nanofibers(IINFs), i.e., the electrospinning and ion imprinting technique is presented. The electrospinning solution was composed of the matrix polymer and the imprinting complex. The model fibrous ion-imprinted adsorbent[Cu(II)-IINF] was synthesized from poly(vinyl alcohol) as the matrix polymer and the complex of Cu(II) and L-histidine as the imprinting complex. The product was characterized by Fourier transform infrared spectrometry(FTIR) and the scanning electron microscopy(SEM), respectively. The adsorption of Cu(II)-IINF for Cu(II) was conducted by a batch of experiments. The adsorption capacity reached 114.75 mg/g at 45 °C and the selectivity coefficients of Cu(II)-IINF for Cu(II) relative to Pb(II), Ni(II) and Zn(II) were 51.6, 54.4 and 66.3, respectively. In addition, Cu(II)-IINF also has good regeneration performance and the efficiency of adsorbing Cu2+ is about 88.3% of the initial adsorption capacity after five cycles. All these results demonstrate that the reported method for preparing fibrous ion-imprinted adsorbents is feasible, and Cu(II)-IINF is a promising adsorbent for the efficient removal and recovery of copper ions from the aqueous solution.