Efficient removal of dyes, heavy metals and oil-water from wastewater using electrospun nanofiber membranes: A review

Freshwater shortage has become a serious issue in today's world due to rapid population expansion. Large amounts of hazardous chemicals were released into waterbodies as a result of the widespread industrial expansion. The removal of impurities from the wastewater, including dyes, heavy metal ions, oil, pharmaceutical products, and other toxins, is crucial in this regard. Due to its large surface area, small pore size, good connection, ease of modification, and fine flexibility, electrospun nanofibers play a superior role in water research. Nanofibers are fibers with dimensions in the range of a few nanometres. They are useful for water purification, energy storage, sensors, tissue engineering, and other applications since they are lightweight and have several distinctive properties. Nanofibers undergo functionalization through different techniques such as electrospinning, phase inversion, track-etching, sintering etc. The electrospinning technique is one of the advanced techniques to develop functionalized nanofiber as compared with other techniques. Functionalized nanofiber shows excellent properties such as surface area, porosity, interconnected structure, easy surface modification etc. Due to its unique features, it is widely used for wastewater treatment. Wastewater removal by functionalized nanofiber is done by separation, filtration, adsorption. In this review, we summarize the challenges and perspectives of functionalized nanofiber for wastewater treatment and purification.