Graphene oxide-functionalized dual-scale channels architecture for high-throughput removal of organic pollutants from water

Abstract Amino-functionalized polypropylene nonwoven/graphene oxide (GO) hybrid material (PP-g-DMAEMA/GO) with dual-scale channels structure was fabricated via irradiation polymerization and self-assembly method for rapid removal of 7 kinds of organic pollutants from water. The GO sheets tethered to grafted branches of dimethylaminoethyl methacrylate (DMAEMA) on PP fiber surface could form nanochannels between GO and fiber. Meanwhile, polypropylene nonwoven could provide the backbone for building micron-channels. The overlapped and intertwined structure of PP-g-DMAEMA/GO with many channels assures water permeating fluently, and the GO could capture quickly the organic pollutants carried by water both in batch and filtration process. The obtained PP-g-DMAEMA/GO could keep 74.3% of the adsorption performance of GO, which demonstrated two sides of GO could afford accessible binding sites. While the flow rate reach 40 mL/min, the PP-g-DMAEMA/GO was able to effectively remove Bisphenol A (BPA) with the contact time of 3.4 s. Moreover, the PP-g-DMAEMA/GO could simply be recovered by washing with ethanol solution. We conclude the paper that the facile synthesis of PP-g-DMAEMA/GO exploiting inexpensive PP nonwoven offer high water permeability, solving the separation problem of GO, and promising potential for applications of GO for water applications.