From waste to wealth: a cellulose-based fibrous membrane from recycled cigarettes supported with dual perovskite for formaldehyde degradation at room temperature

Formaldehyde, as a hazardous indoor contaminant following house decoration, is essential to its efficient removal at room temperature. This paper reports an eco-friendly approach for extracting cellulose acetate (CA) from waste cigarette filters to construct a nanofibrous composite membrane for formaldehyde degradation at ambient temperature. A composite nanofibrous membrane was fabricated by salable electrospinning of cellulose acetate and La2CoMnO6/CeO2 (LC), followed by hydrolysis and potassium doping with KOH. The membrane demonstrates excellent catalytic activity (97.56% of conversion), super stability (95.35% of conversion after 50 h) and long service life (93.96% of conversion after 3 catalysis cycles), which is ascribed to the synergistic catalytic effect of double perovskite and rapid hygroscopic properties of cellulose. In addition, the obtained membrane has a higher moisture regain (7.82%) than that of the LC/CA nanofibrous membrane (2.21%), and higher than that of the commercial air filter membrane using polypropylene (PP) fiber (near zero), accelerating formaldehyde adsorption and fastening the water removal, thereby allowing for the long-term positive progress of formaldehyde catalytic oxidation reaction. This work provides encouraging guidance for further exploration into formaldehyde degradation, which is promising for application in air cleaning.