Efficient, reusable electrospun PAN nanofibers membrane for oil- water separation

The discharge of oily wastewater from petroleum and oil refineries are one of the ultimate rising environmental concern recently due to its adverse effect in the marine environment. Therefore, development of cost-effective, eco-friendly, and quick oil-water separation methods has become necessary. This causes contaminating of water bodies. Oil spill is a major problem which arises during transportation, storage, mining, refining and usage which causes damage to the environment [1,2,3]. Sorption method is highly effective, eco-friendly, simple processing and cost-effective. In a sorption process, there are no secondary pollutants involved [4]. Removal of oil from water surfaces using adsorption/sorption method have been done with several materials. Ideal material for oil adsorption should have high hydrophobicity/oleophilicity, high oil retaining, low water sorption, cost effectiveness, readily available and most of all environmental friendly [5]. Organic synthetic fibers show tuneable hydrophobicity, are cost effective, readily available in large quantity, and environmentally friendly. These properties of organic synthetic fibers make them a good candidate for oil spill cleanup [2]. Polyacrylonitrile (PAN) nanofibers have been used because of its low cost, easy availability, solvent resistance, good conductivity, high strength, easy to handle, simple regulation of pore size and porosity of the fibers and easily degradable in nature [4,5]. These fibers show high oliophilicity and good hydrophobicity and oil capacity. In this work, we presented an eco-friendly PAN nanofiber for Chloroform adsorption and separation from water source. BET specific surface area of PAN nanofibers is 15.963 m2 g−1 with average pore diameter of 1.385 nm showing mesoporous as well as microporous structure. The Contact angle was found out to be 100.9o for water and average adsorption capacity of chloroform was 3.75 g/g.