Adsorption of methylene blue via electrospun polyvinyl butyral/bentonite

Abstract

The textile industry is one of the most common industry that can be found in Malaysia. In turn, the dye waste produced from said industry is abundant. There are solutions that had been done to comply and remove the dyes but it is not cost effective. The electrospinning (ELS) technology is having been used to produce polymers that could be used as separation membranes, filters, and in the medical field but it could also be used in the adsorption of dyes and heavy metals. The advantage of using the electrospinner is that the produced fiber is nano-sized thus it has a high surface area and it is also very light and thin. This experiment used polyvinyl butyral (PVB) as its electrospinning polymer to act as the binder for the adsorbent, Bentonite (Ben). The PVB is dissolved in ethanol before bentonite was added to the solution. After that, the solution is ultrasonicated and electrospun. The resultant PVB/Ben nanofiber mat is used to adsorb methylene blue (MB). It is found that we could remove 86% of 100 ppm MB in 7 hours.