Highly porous Ti4O7 reactive electrochemical water filtration membranes fabricated via electrospinning/electrospraying Academic Article uri icon

abstract

  • 2015 American Institute of Chemical Engineers. Porous, flexible, reactive electrochemical membranes (REMs) for water purification were synthesized by a novel simultaneous electrospinning/electrospraying (E/E) technique, which produced a network of poly(sulfone) fibers and Ti4O7 particles as evidenced by scanning electron microscopy. Cyclic voltammetry indicated that the kinetics for water electrolysis reactions and the Fe(CN)64-/3- redox couple were enhanced by Ti4O7 deposition using the E/E technique. Membrane filtration experiments using phenol as a model contaminant showed a 2.6-fold enhancement in the observed first-order rate constant for phenol oxidation (kobs,phenol) in filtration mode relative to cross-flow operation. Phenol oxidation in filtration mode was approaching the pore diffusion mass transfer limit, and was 6 to 8 times higher than measured in a previous study that utilized a ceramic Ti4O7 REM operated in filtration mode and is comparable to rate constants obtained with carbon nanotube flow-through reactors, which are among the highest reported in the literature to date.

published proceedings

  • AICHE JOURNAL

author list (cited authors)

  • Santos, M. C., Elabd, Y. A., Jing, Y., Chaplin, B. P., & Fang, L.

citation count

  • 32

complete list of authors

  • Santos, Melissa C||Elabd, Yossef A||Jing, Yin||Chaplin, Brian P||Fang, Lei

publication date

  • February 2016

publisher