Polyacrylonitrile homogeneous blend hollow fiber membrane with stable structure as a substrate to support Fe/Mn oxide and its enhanced capability to purify dye wastewater

Blending different molecular weight polyacrylonitrile (PAN) was adopted to solve the shrinkage problem of high molecular weight PAN hollow fiber membrane, to enhance the application performance of low molecular weight PAN membrane, and to adjust the porosity, pore size distribution, and hydrophilicity of the end product. The structurally-optimized membrane was chosen as a substrate to support Fe/Mn oxides and then used as a reactor to remove dyes from their solutions in the presence of H2O2. The results showed that the flux of methylene blue (MB) aqueous solution was 83.7 L/m2 h for the PAN homogeneous blend membrane, much higher than 29.1 L/m2 h of high molecular weight PAN membrane; MB removal efficiency was 97.3%, higher than 62.3% of low molecular weight PAN membrane, and it could be reused 25 times to remove dyes from their solutions without any loss in removal efficiency. The membrane was also found to have the application advantages of decreasing H2O2 dosage, reducing operation pressure, and raising MB removal efficiency compared with other membranes reported in the pieces of literature. Therefore, we were confident that the hollow fiber membrane fabricated by us would exhibit great application potential in the field of decontaminating dye wastewater.