Fabrication of polyethersulfone/polyacrylonitrile electrospun nanofiber membrane for food industry wastewater treatment

In the present work, polyethersulfone/polyacrylonitrile (PES/PAN) blended electrospun nanofiber-based membrane was fabricated and applied for an environmentally friendly protocol for removing methylene blue (MB) from aqueous solutions. The structural integrity of the newly synthesized membrane was investigated by SEM, FTIR, TGA and XRD, demonstrating the successful integration of the PES/PAN blended nanofibers membrane. SEM results exhibited a smooth surface of the blended PES/PAN nanofiber membrane with an ultrathin diameter of 151.5 nm, much better than the pristine PES nanofiber membrane (261.5 nm). Besides, the blended PES/PAN nanofiber membrane showed a good mechanical stability and hydrophilicity nature, which are vital for adsorption study. Experimental adsorption kinetic data obeyed by the pseudo-second-order (R² = 0.9970) and consistent with the Langmuir isotherm model (R² = 0.9983) by showing the maximum adsorption capacity of 1010 mg_MB/g at neutral pH and room temperature, indicating that that the adsorption process occurred in a monolayer form of the membrane surface. Meanwhile, selective inorganic ions were used to simulate the real wastewater scenario and found that PO₄³⁻ positively influences MB adsorption. The novel membrane resulted in optimally recyclable up to 5 times. In addition, the adsorption mechanism revealed that electrostatic attraction was the dominant factor in the generation of the adsorption capacity of the membrane. Based on these results, it could be concluded that this novel PES/PAN blend nanofibers membrane could be a potential candidate for future wastewater treatment application with increased efficiency.