Removal of toxic arsenic from aqueous media using polyphenylsulfone/cellulose acetate hollow fiber membranes containing zirconium oxide

Arsenic is one of the highly dangerous metalloid present in the polluted water, it’s effective and economical removal is one of the major challenges to the researchers. It was planned to prepare hollow fiber membranes using polyphenylsulfone (PPSU) as a polymer, cellulose acetate (CA) and cellulose acetate phthalate (CAP) as additives with increased dosages (0.6, 1 and 1.5 wt%) of zirconium oxide (ZrO2) nanoparticle. The fabricated hollow fiber membranes were characterized by SEM, AFM, zeta potential, ATR-FTIR and XPS to analyze the membrane’s morphologies (cross-section and surface), topography, surface charge and assessment of different functional groups. As used ZrO2 was characterized by TEM and XRD to analyze the morphology and crystallinity. The positron annihilation lifetime spectroscopy (PALS) analysis was carried out for neat and ZrO2 contained membranes, to study the expansion of free-volume in membrane morphology. Leaching studies of the used zirconium with respect to different pH from the ZrO2 contained hollow fiber membrane was also examined. The enhancement of membrane hydrophilicity was confirmed by contact angle, porosity, water uptake and pure water permeability measurements. Membranes prepared by 1 wt% of ZrO2 in PPSU/CA (PZCA-1) and 0.6 wt% of ZrO2 in PPSU/CAP (PZCAP-0.6) were proved to be efficient as arsenic removal membranes (i.e. PZCA-1 as 87.24% and PZCAP-0.6 as 70.48% and permeability of 89.94 L/m2h bar and 70.59 L/m2h bar respectively) using lab-prepared 1 ppm standard arsenic solution at pH range of 6.8 ± 0.2. Also, there is a decrease in the arsenic removal tendency was observed with the excessive dosages of ZrO2, which is due to the concentration polarization on surfaces of the membranes. Antifouling behavior of the prepared hollow fiber membranes was also studied using bovine serum albumin (BSA).