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Hierarchical CuO–ZnO/SiO2 Fibrous Membranes for Efficient Removal of Congo Red and 4-Nitrophenol from Water

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Abstract

Hierarchical CuO–ZnO/SiO2 (CZS) nanofibrous membranes are designed and fabricated to remove Congo red and 4-nitrophenol two common small molecular pollutants in water. The electrospun SiO2 fibrous membrane is serves as the substrate for hydrothermal depositing CuO–ZnO nanosheets. The CZS nanofibrous membrane shows good adsorption characteristics for Congo red due to the hierarchical morphology and the adsorption kinetics where isotherm follows the pseudo-second-order model and Langmuir model, respectively. The maximum adsorption capacity for Congo red is 141.8 mg/g. Moreover, the membrane exhibits excellent catalytic reduction activity for 4-nitrophenol under mild conditions and over 96% of the pollutants are degraded within 90 s. The CZS nanofibrous membrane has promising prospects in applications in water treatment and environmental protection because of the good flexibility, easy fabrication, excellent adsorption, and catalytic activity.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant number 51903044) and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (Grant number 2232020D-03).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory for Modification of Chemical Fibers and Polymer Materials, College of Material Science and Engineering, Donghua University, Shanghai, 201620, China

    Caihong Wang, Zheyi Meng & Xuefen Wang

  2. Key Laboratory of Textile Fiber and Products, Ministry of Education, Hubei International Scientific and Technological Cooperation Base of Intelligent Textile Materials and Application, Wuhan Textile University, Wuhan, 430200, China

    Ke Liu & Dong Wang

  3. Department of Physics, Department of Materials Science and Engineering, and Department of Biomedical Engineering, City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, 999077, China

    Guomin Wang & Paul K. Chu

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  1. Caihong Wang
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  2. Ke Liu
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Wang, C., Liu, K., Wang, D. et al. Hierarchical CuO–ZnO/SiO2 Fibrous Membranes for Efficient Removal of Congo Red and 4-Nitrophenol from Water. Adv. Fiber Mater. 4, 1069–1080 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s42765-022-00142-x

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