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High flux photocatalytic self-cleaning nanosheet C3N4 membrane supported by cellulose nanofibers for dye wastewater purification

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Abstract

Hazardous dye substances discharged from the textile and dyestuff industries not only threaten local the surrounding ecosystems but are also hard to degraded. We report the preparation of process for a photocatalytic membrane device that can degrade dye pollution under visible light. This filtration membrane, with a well-organized multilayer structure, simultaneously achieves continuous and flow-through separation of degradation products. Cellulose nanofibers (CNFs) were used as a template for nanosheet C3N4 (NS C3N4) preparation; the performance for the photocatalytic degradation of dyes improved as the morphology changed from bulking to nanosheet. NS C3N4 was then attached to the surface of a prepared CNF membrane via vacuum filtration. This device exhibited high efficiency (the degradation rates of both Rhodamine B and Methylene blue both reached 96%), high flux (above 160 L·h−1·m−2·bar−1) and excellent stability (maintaining steady flux and high separation were maintained after 4 h). This easy-preparation, easy-scale-up, and low-cost process provides a new method of fabricating photocatalytic membrane devices for dye wastewater treatment.

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Acknowledgements

This study was financially supported by the National Key R&D Program of China (No. 2018YFC1902101), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 21908127, 21838006, and 21776159), the project supported by the Foundation (No. KF201810) of Key Laboratory of Pulp and Paper Science and Technology of Ministry of Education/Shandong Province of China and Opening Project of the Key Laboratory of Bionic Engineering (Ministry of Education), Jilin University.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Nuclear and New Energy Technology, Tsinghua University, Beijing, 100084, China

    Lilong Zhang, Guifang Fan & Yulong Wu

  2. The Key Laboratory of Bionic Engineering (Ministry of Education), Jilin University, Jilin, 130012, China

    Lilong Zhang & Keli Chen

  3. Department of Chemistry, Tsinghua University, Beijing, 100084, China

    Ge Meng

  4. School of Chemical Engineering and Technology, Xinjiang University, Urumqi, 830046, China

    Yulong Wu

  5. College of Materials Science and Engineering, Qingdao University of Science and Technology, Qingdao, 266042, China

    Jian Liu

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  1. Lilong Zhang
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Correspondence to Yulong Wu.

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High flux photocatalytic self-cleaning nanosheet C3N4 membrane supported by cellulose nanofibers for dye wastewater purification

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Zhang, L., Meng, G., Fan, G. et al. High flux photocatalytic self-cleaning nanosheet C3N4 membrane supported by cellulose nanofibers for dye wastewater purification. Nano Res. 14, 2568–2573 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-020-3256-0

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-020-3256-0

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