Electrospun Nanofibers from Waste Polyvinyl Chloride Loaded Silver and Titanium Dioxide for Water Treatment Applications

The electrospun nanofiber membrane from polyvinyl chloride(PVC)waste for water treatment applications has been successfully produced.The PVC precursor solution was prepared by dissolving the PVC wastein DMAc solvent, and a centrifuge was used to separate undissolvedmaterials from the precursor solution. Ag and TiO2 wereadded to the precursor solution before the electrospinning process.We studied the fabricated PVC membranes using SEM, EDS, XRF, XRD,and FTIR to study the fiber and membrane properties. The SEM imagesdepicted that Ag and TiO2 addition has changed the morphologyand size of fibers. The EDS images and XRF spectra confirmed the presenceof Ag and TiO2 on the nanofiber membrane. The XRD spectrashowed the amorphous structure of all membranes. The FTIR result indicatedthat the solvent completely evaporated throughout the spinning process.The fabricated PVC@Ag/TiO2 nanofiber membrane showed thephotocatalytic degradation of dyes under visible light. The filtrationtest on the membrane PVC and PVC@Ag/TiO2 depicted thatthe presence of Ag and TiO2 affected the flux and separationfactor of the membrane.