A photo-Fenton self-cleaning membrane based on NH2-MIL-88B (Fe) and graphene oxide to improve dye removal performance

Herein, a novel membrane with polyacrylic acid (PAA), NH2-MIL-88B(Fe) (NM88B), and graphene oxide (GO) was fabricated via a simple vacuum filter method equipped with the nylon membrane substrate. The composite membrane (PAA@NM88B/GO membrane) retained the laminated structure of GO, and PAA@NM88B was used as the photo-Fenton catalytic nano-filler to intercalate GO. Through a series of material characterization and membrane separation performance tests, the results showed that by introducing porous NM88B and PAA cross-linking modification, PAA@NM88B/GO membrane had excellent hydrophilicity, water flux and dye rejection performance. The flux of the PAA@NM88B/GO membrane was 68.21 L m(-2) h(-1) bar(-1), which is about 15 times higher than that of GO membrane. In addition, the composite membrane had a high rejection (over 97%) for methylene blue (MB), crystal violet (CV) and Congo red (CR). More importantly, PAA@NM88B/GO membrane can also be used to degrade textile wastewater in real life. The membrane can be used as a catalyst to degrade contaminants, and had a high removal of MB in 40 min (98.79%) under the synergistic effect of membrane adsorption and photocatalysis. Therefore, the results indicated that this new type of PAA@NM88B/GO membrane had potential applications in water purification and actual textile wastewater treatment.

Automated summary

A novel composite membrane containing PAA, NM88B, and GO was fabricated and showed excellent water purification and wastewater treatment performance through the introduction of PAA and NM88B, as well as the utilization of GO.