A photo-Fenton self-cleaning membrane based on NH2-MIL-88B (Fe) and graphene oxide to improve dye removal performance

Abstract Herein, a novel membrane with polyacrylic acid (PAA), NH2-MIL-88B(Fe) (NM88B), and graphene oxide (GO) was fabricated via a simple vacuum filter method equipped with the nylon membrane substrate. The composite membrane (PAA@NM88B/GO membrane) retained the laminated structure of GO, and PAA@NM88B was used as the photo-Fenton catalytic nano-filler to intercalate GO. Through a series of material characterization and membrane separation performance tests, the results showed that by introducing porous NM88B and PAA cross-linking modification, PAA@NM88B/GO membrane had excellent hydrophilicity, water flux and dye rejection performance. The flux of the PAA@NM88B/GO membrane was 68.21 L m−2 h−1 bar−1, which is about 15 times higher than that of GO membrane. In addition, the composite membrane had a high rejection (over 97%) for methylene blue (MB), crystal violet (CV) and Congo red (CR). More importantly, PAA@NM88B/GO membrane can also be used to degrade textile wastewater in real life. The membrane can be used as a catalyst to degrade contaminants, and had a high removal of MB in 40 min (98.79%) under the synergistic effect of membrane adsorption and photocatalysis. Therefore, the results indicated that this new type of PAA@NM88B/GO membrane had potential applications in water purification and actual textile wastewater treatment.