Abstract
Air and water pollution poses a serious threat to public health and the ecological environment worldwide. Particulate matter (PM) is the major air pollutant, and its primary sources are processes that require high temperatures, such as fossil fuel combustion and vehicle exhaust. PM0.3 can penetrate and seriously harm the bronchi of the lungs, but it is difficult to remove PM0.3 due to its small size. Therefore, PM0.3 air filters that are highly efficient and resistant to high temperatures must be developed. Polyimide (PI) is an excellent polymer with a high temperature resistance and a good mechanical property. Air filters made from PI nanofibers have a high PM removal efficiency and a low air flow resistance. Herein, zeolitic imidazolate framework-8 (ZIF-8) was used to modify PI nanofibers to fabricate air filters with a high specific surface area and filtration efficiency. Compared with traditional PI membranes, the ZIF-8/PI multifunction nanofiber membranes achieved super-high filtration efficiency for ultrafine particles (PM0.3, 100%), and the pressure drop was only 63 Pa. The filtration mechanism of performance improvement caused by the introduction of ZIF-8/PI nanofiber membrane is explored. Moreover, the ZIF-8/PI nanofiber membranes exhibited excellent thermal stability (300 C) and efficient water–oil separation ability (99.85%).
Highlights
Air and water pollution due to rapid industrialization and urbanization poses a serious threat to the ecological environmental and human health (Wang B et al, 2015; Lv et al, 2019)
The filter membranes can be used for oil-water separation because the positive charge carried by zeolitic imidazolate framework-8 (ZIF-8) can interact with the negative charge carried by the oil drop to enhance its lipophilicity, and its superhigh specific surface area leads to hydrophobic interactions, thereby improving filtration efficiency
The X-Ray Diffraction (XRD) patterns of the ZIF-8-3/PI nanofiber membranes were similar to those of pure PI nanofiber membranes, but the peaks of the ZIF-8/PI nanofiber membranes at 12.75° and 19.53° were enhanced, which corresponded to the position of the characteristic peak of ZIF-8 (Wang et al, 2015a)
Summary
Air and water pollution due to rapid industrialization and urbanization poses a serious threat to the ecological environmental and human health (Wang B et al, 2015; Lv et al, 2019). Li et al (Xu et al, 2018) prepared a ZIF-8 seed on PVDF/ZnO membranes by activation step and expanded it in the growth step to separate water from oil solution This method involves numerous steps, which compromise the repeatability and stability of experiments (An et al, 2016). A previous work (Dai et al, 2016) prepared PI nanofiber membranes by using the electrospinning precursor polyamide acid (PAA) solution on the gate receiver This innovation has lowered the cost of PI synthesis, broaden its application range, and increased its filtration efficiency (the maximum filtration efficiency of PM0.3 was 100%). To address the attendant problems in air filtration and oil–water separation, we prepared highly efficient ZIF-8/PI nanofiber membranes via a simple co-spinning method. The filter membranes can be used for oil-water separation because the positive charge carried by ZIF-8 can interact with the negative charge carried by the oil drop to enhance its lipophilicity, and its superhigh specific surface area leads to hydrophobic interactions, thereby improving filtration efficiency
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