Ural Federal University Experts Make An Adsorbent With 99.14% Efficiency
UrFU scientists together with colleagues from Egypt have synthesized an adsorbent for wastewater purification from methylene blue dye (widely used in textile, plastic and paper industries). The efficiency of the adsorbent was proved through tests – up to 99.14% of the industrial dye is neutralized. This is an extremely high indicator, as the efficiency of most analogs is at best 90%.
The new adsorbent is safe because it is based on cellulose – one of the most environmentally friendly materials on Earth. The low cost and high efficiency of the adsorbent could make it attractive for global projects in the future, such as river cleanup. More details are published in Scientific Reports.
“Our development can be useful for use in wastewater treatment plants to reduce wastewater pollution. It will prevent negative consequences for the environment and have a beneficial effect on the health of living organisms. Unlike its analogs, our adsorbent is environmentally safe, effective and has a low production cost. During the tests, the maximum percentage of removal of harmful substances reached 99.14%. In the future, this will allow us to use our adsorbent for global projects, for example, cleaning large water bodies from industrial dye,” explains Ismail Hossein, a researcher at the Laboratory of Functional Nanomaterials and Nanodevices of UrFU.
Methylene blue dye is used to dye cotton, wool, silk in bright blue color. It is also used in factories that make textiles, paper, rubber, plastics, and photographic products. Even in medicine it is in great demand, for example, it is used in the treatment of genitourinary tract infections. As a result, this dye often ends up in wastewater. And that is a risk to agriculture, fisheries and human health.
The adsorbent is based on cellulose nanofiber, a safe material that is recyclable. Other components include activated carbon, graphene oxide and carbon nanotubes. These substances have high adsorption capacity and increase the absorption efficiency of harmful dyes. By combining these substances together and turning them into a polymer, the scientists were able to use electrospinning, a simple, environmentally friendly and inexpensive technology to produce nanofibers.
“Recent studies have confirmed the use of cellulose as a natural adsorbent material. Cellulose is a natural polysaccharide and includes a large amount of glucose. This endows it with attractive properties – renewable, non-toxic, biodegradable, great dye absorption capacity. Cellulose is a constituent of many plants such as cotton, flax, wood. Cellulose can be easily extracted from them and used to create an adsorbent,” commented Ismail Hossain.
According to the scientists, the maximum percentage of dye removal from the aquatic environment is achieved in 180 minutes. In the future, the researchers plan to continue work in this direction and modify the adsorbent. In particular, it is planned to accelerate the purification process, as well as to expand the list of harmful substances available for removal.