Photocatalytic membrane of TiO₂/CNT decorated PAN nanofibers with enhanced performance under LED visible-light irradiation

Abstract

Incorporating TiO 2 with CNTs and PAN nanofiber structures results in a photocatalytic membrane composite with an attractive response in the visible region. It offers an efficient process without post-treatment separation at the end of the photocatalytic treatment. The composite membranes were fabricated using electrospinning at 7 kV with 10 cm in the distance between needle tip and collector at a flow rate of 1 mL h −1 . Polyacrylonitrile (PAN) was used as the polymer matrix. All the as-spun composites exhibited randomly oriented nanofibers. CNT increased the fiber diameters from 324 to 463 nm. The bandgap of TiO 2 also shifted from 3.15 to 2.76 eV at the narrowest The color removal kinetics follow the Langmuir-Hinshelwood pseudo-first-order kinetics model with the highest rate constant of 0.0225 min −1 shown by PAN/TiO 2 /CNT 20%. More than 95% color removal of methylene blue after 100 min irradiation has been achieved using LED lamps of low energy visible light (43.5 W). Such a result is supposed to be the highest employing low energy lamps. [Formula: see text]