An eco-friendly and reusable syringe filter membrane for the efficient removal of dyes from water via low pressure filtration assisted self-assembling of graphene oxide and SBA-15/PDA

Majority of the membranes composed of a combination of graphene oxide (GO), metal nanoparticles and hydrophilic polymers have been extensively used as nanofiltration membranes for removal of dyes and heavy metals from wastewater. However, only few studies have been reported for syringe filtration of dyes using GO based membranes for practical filtration applications due to their poor stability and low permeation flux. Herein, we report an eco-friendly, economical and reusable syringe filter membranes composed of whatman 42 filters modified by low pressure filtration assisted self-assembling of an appropriate mixtures of graphene oxide (GO) and polydopamine (PDA) encapsulated mesoporous silica (SBA-15-PDA) for the efficient removal of Methylene blue (MB) and Eriochrome Black T (EBT) dyes. The influence of parameters on adsorptive removal of dyes such as filter composition, sorption efficiency, solution pH (3–11), and cyclic stability were investigated in detail. The obtained results revealed that the dyes removal and permeation flux of an optimum membrane i.e., GO10/(SBA-15/PDA)2 were 99.61% and 2487.4 Lm−2h−1b−1 for MB wastewater, and 90.86% and 2486.4 Lm−2h−1b−1 for EBT wastewater respectively. An effective removal of these dyes and permeation flux results confirmed that the GO10/(SBA-15/PDA)2 membrane can be used as an inexpensive and eco-friendly reusable syringe filter for dyes removal. Further improvements in their performance can lead to commercialization of these eco-friendly syringe filter membranes.