Sulfonated Pentablock Copolymer Coating of Polypropylene Filters for Dye and Metal Ions Effective Removal by Integrated Adsorption and Filtration Process.
Simona Filice: Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Istituto per la Microelettronica e Microsistemi (CNR-IMM), Ottava Strada n.5, 95121 Catania, Italy. ORCID
Viviana Scuderi: Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Istituto per la Microelettronica e Microsistemi (CNR-IMM), Ottava Strada n.5, 95121 Catania, Italy.
Sebania Libertino: Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Istituto per la Microelettronica e Microsistemi (CNR-IMM), Ottava Strada n.5, 95121 Catania, Italy. ORCID
Massimo Zimbone: Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Istituto per la Microelettronica e Microsistemi (CNR-IMM), Via S. Sofia 64, 95123 Catania, Italy.
Clelia Galati: STMicroelectronics Stradale Primosole 50, 95121 Catania, Italy. ORCID
Natalia Spinella: STMicroelectronics Stradale Primosole 50, 95121 Catania, Italy.
Leon Gradon: Faculty of Chemical and Process Engineering, Warsaw University of Technology, ul. Warynskiego 1, 00-645 Warsaw, Poland. ORCID
Silvia Scalese: Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Istituto per la Microelettronica e Microsistemi (CNR-IMM), Ottava Strada n.5, 95121 Catania, Italy. ORCID
In this work, we coated polypropylene (PP) fibrous filters with sulfonated pentablock copolymer (s-PBC) layers and tested them for the removal of cationic organic dyes, such as methylene blue (MB), and heavy metal ions (Fe3+ and Co2+) from water by adsorption and filtration experiments. Some of the coated filters were irradiated by UV light before being exposed to contaminated water and then were tested with unirradiated filters in the same adsorption and filtration experiments. Polymer-coated filters showed high efficiency in removing MB from an aqueous solution in both absorption and filtration processes, with 90% and 80% removal, respectively. On the other hand, for heavy metal ions (Fe3+ and Co2+), the coated filters showed a better removal performance in the filtration process than for the adsorption one. In fact, in the adsorption process, controlled interaction times allow the ionic species to interact with the surface of the filters leading to the formation and release of new species in solution. During filtration, the ionic species are easily trapped in the filters, in particular by UV modified filters, and we observed for Fe3+ ions a total removal (>99%) in a single filtration process and for Co2+ ions a larger removal with respect to the untreated filter. The mechanisms involved in the removal of the contaminants processes were investigated by characterizing the filters before and after use by means of scanning electron microscopy (SEM) combined with energy-dispersive X-ray (EDX) analysis and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR).
