MOF Derived Carbon Nanofibers Substrate Supported Polymeric Ultrafiltration Membrane for Efficient Removal of Trace Organic Contaminants

Efficient removal on trace organic contaminants (TrOCs) from a complicated water matrix is highly desired to improve the quality of discharged wastewater effluents. In this work, a sequential separation-catalysis membrane (SSCM) was designed by fabricating a poly(ether sulfone) ultrafiltration (UF) membrane via a traditional nonsolvent induced phase separation process on Co3O4/C nanofibers substrate, which was derived from electrospinning nanofibers of polyacrylonitrile/pyrolytic zeolite imidazolate frameworks-67. The resultant SSCM successfully integrated the functions of separation and catalysis, and enhanced the mass-transfer in the catalytic area. Notably, the SSCM exhibited above 99% catalytic degradation of bisphenol A (BPA) under the flux of 122.8 L m–2 h–1 and the unique design of integrated separation and catalysis dual function layers significantly accelerated the kinetics of BPA degradation, which was 19.77 times higher than that of series connected processes of UF membrane and bare catalytic substrate (BCS). Furthermore, as demonstrated by filtering the water matrices containing humic acid and TrOCs (BPA), the BPA removal efficiency of SSCM had increased by 20% and 73% and continued to grow compared to the catalysis followed by ultrafiltration mode and BCS. This work provides a promising design on enhanced removal of TrOCs for water purification and wastewater reuse.