Efficient treatment of hazardous reactive dye effluents through antifouling polyetherimide hollow fiber membrane embedded with functionalized halloysite nanotubes

Abstract

A simple, efficient and scalable approach was developed for the fabrication of highly fouling resistance nanocomposite hollow fiber membranes with the aim of effective removal of environmentally detrimental reactive dyes. The naturally occurring halloysite nanotubes were functionalized via facile self-polymerization of m-aminophenol in mild acidic condition and employed as a hydrophilic additive. The chemical modification was confirmed by FTIR, TEM and energy dispersed X-ray (EDX) analysis. The hybrid nanocomposite membrane was prepared by dry–wet spin technique with different additive dosage. The resultant membrane was characterized in terms of contact angle, surface energy, porosity, zeta potential, elemental mapping and morphology. The permeation experiments illustrated superior water flux of 104.9 Lm−1 h−1 and 9.6% of irreversible fouling with more than 90.3% of flux recovery by the simple hydraulic cleaning. Most importantly, prepared membrane was subjected for hazardous reactive dye removal application with different experimental parameters. The hybrid membrane with 2 wt. % of additive concentration showed more than 97% and 94% for the Reactive Red 102 and Reactive Black 5 dyes respectively. This approach may also be very useful in developing high flux, fouling resistant ultrafiltration hollow fiber membranes for the other similar type applications such as hemodialysis membranes.