Preparation And Properties Of Polyacrylonitrile-based Hybrid Micro-nanofibers

Metal oxide semiconductor nanoparticles play an important role in water treatment due to its great advantage in improving the mechanical stress and tolerance of materials and its higher optical transparency.However,individual nanoparticles are easily agglomerated and difficult to recycle,which greatly limits their application.In this paper,we incorporate polyacrylonitrile(PAN),with excellent spinnability,weathering resistance(sunlight resistance,cold and heat resistance,etc),and zinc oxide(ZnO NPs),a Semiconductor metal oxide with outstanding physical and chemical properties,as a hybrid material,and we study its performance in organic wastewater treatment and water evaporation.First,ZnO NPs was prepared in a green process.After mixing with PAN,ZnO/PAN hybrid nanofiber mats(ZnO/PAN@NFMS)was prepared through airflow spinning method and studied in photocatalytic experiments.The results showed that ZnO/PAN@NFMs had excellent photocatalytic activity for organic dyes,and the photocatalytic efficiency of ZnO/PAN@NFMs for methyl orange(MO),methylene blue(MB)and rhodamine B(Rh B)were still above 94%within 2 h after five cycles of experiments.In order to improve the photocatalytic activity of ZnO/PAN@NFMs,the prepared ZnO/PAN@NFMs was carbonized at high temperature in this work.The results showed that the photocatalytic efficiency of ZnO/PAN@CNFMs for the three dyes was improved obviously.Moreover,we found its apparent adsorption property.Within 1 h,the adsorption rate of MO and Rh B can reach 27%,the adsorption rate of MB can reach 40%.At the same time,after carbonization,the absorbance of ZnO/PAN@CNFMs to visible light is greatly increased,and the utilization rate of hybrid nanofiber felt with nanostructure is also high,so the water evaporation efficiency of hybrid nanofiber mats is further explored.The results showed that the carbonized hybrid nanofiber felt has a high water evaporation efficiency,up to 2.1 kg m^-2 h^-1,which is 4.2 times of the evaporation rate of pure water.According to the above,ZnO/PAN@CNFMs prepared by airflow spinning method can has a broad prospect in photocatalytic treatment of organic wastewater and water evaporation.