Core-shell graphene oxide-polymer hollow fibers as water filters with enhanced performance and selectivity
Artikel i vetenskaplig tidskrift, 2021
Commercial hollow fiber filters for micro- and ultrafiltration are based on size exclusion and do not allow the removal of small molecules such as antibiotics. Here, we demonstrate that a graphene oxide (GO) layer can be firmly immobilized either inside or outside polyethersulfone-polyvinylpyrrolidone hollow fiber (Versatile PES (R), hereafter PES) modules and that the resulting core-shell fibers inherits the microfiltration ability of the pristine PES fibers and the adsorption selectivity of GO. GO nanosheets were deposited on the fiber surface by filtration of a GO suspension through a PES cartridge (cut-off 0.1-0.2 mu m), then fixed by thermal annealing at 80 degrees C, rendering the GO coating stably fixed and unsoluble. The filtration cut-off, retention selectivity and efficiency of the resulting inner and outer modified hollow fibers (HF-GO) were tested by performing filtration on water and bovine plasma spiked with bovine serum albumin (BSA, 66 kDa, approximate to 15 nm size), monodisperse polystyrene nanoparticles (52 nm and 303 nm sizes), with two quinolonic antibiotics (ciprofloxacin and ofloxacin) and rhodamine B (RhB). These tests showed that the microfiltration capability of PES was retained by HF-GO, and in addition the GO coating can capture the molecular contaminants while letting through BSA and smaller polystyrene nanoparticles. Combined XRD, molecular modelling and adsorption experiments show that the separation mechanism does not rely only on physical size exclusion, but involves intercalation of solute molecules between the GO layers.
Författare
Alessandro Kovtun
Istituto per la Sintesi Organica e la Fotoreattività (ISOF-CNR)
Antonio Bianchi
Istituto per la Sintesi Organica e la Fotoreattività (ISOF-CNR)
Massimo Zambianchi
Istituto per la Sintesi Organica e la Fotoreattività (ISOF-CNR)
Cristian Bettini
Istituto per la Sintesi Organica e la Fotoreattività (ISOF-CNR)
Franco Corticelli
Istituto per la Microelettronica e Microsistemi
Giampiero Ruani
Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (CNR)
Letizia Bocchi
Medica
Francesco Stante
Laboratori Chimici Stante
Massimo Gazzano
Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (CNR)
Tainah Dorina Marforio
Universita di Bologna
Matteo Calvaresi
Universita di Bologna
Matteo Minelli
Universita di Bologna
Maria Luisa Navacchia
Istituto per la Sintesi Organica e la Fotoreattività (ISOF-CNR)
Vincenzo Palermo
Istituto per la Sintesi Organica e la Fotoreattività (ISOF-CNR)
Chalmers, Industri- och materialvetenskap, Material och tillverkning
Manuela Melucci
Istituto per la Sintesi Organica e la Fotoreattività (ISOF-CNR)
Faraday Discussions
1359-6640 (ISSN) 1364-5498 (eISSN)
Vol. 227 274-290Ämneskategorier
Polymerteknologi
Materialkemi
Annan kemi
DOI
10.1039/c9fd00117d
PubMed
33300505