Carbon nanomaterials (CNM) present a unique opportunity to tailor bottom-up nanoscale adsorbents for the efficient removal of pollutants. However, unlike top-down sorbents such as activated carbon, bottom-up designed CNM sorbents are more difficult to recover from water unless enmeshed in macro-scale systems. Electrospinning is a facile method of immobilizing CNM in a flexible polymer while retaining unique nanoscale functionality. In this study, C<sub>60</sub> fullerenes (0D), multiwalled carbon nanotubes (MWNT, 1D), and graphene oxide (2D) were embedded in a polystyrene fiber via electrospinning. A single-step process, without post-treatment of any kind was found to form pores because of a rapid desorption process which occurred during the spinning of the fiber, leaving clear access points for interaction between the aqueous matrix and the embedded nanomaterial inside the polymer fiber. This porous morphology, accompanied by vertical alignment of MWNT and graphene oxide in fibers, are unique to electrospun materials produced in high voltage spinning systems. Sorption experiments with a representative polyaromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) shows graphene oxide networks had the largest adsorption capacity (3.8 mg/g), followed by MWNT networks (2.6 mg/g) or C<sub>60</sub> networks (1.8 mg/g) compared against a neat polystyrene (PS) fiber (XX mg/g). CNM in the fibers exhibited rapid sorption kinetics, fit by pseudo second order rate expressions and were faster than for powdered activated carbon (PAC). The effect of CNM dimensionality is clear in that the higher magnitude dimension materials (1D and 2D) had the largest surface area available for PNT adsorption and therefore are better suited for this application.

Morphology and adsorption kinetics of 0D, 1D, and 2D carbonaceous nanomaterial networks in polymeric electrospun fibers

253rd National Meeting (2017)

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