Influence of natural and synthetic blended polymers on the electrospun PVA/chitosan/PANI composite nanofibers to be used for dye decolorization.

In this work, mixing polyvinyl alcohol (PVA), chitosan (CS) and polyaniline (PANI) to prepare composite nanofibers with improved adsorption capacity using electrospinning technique has been studied, Thereby overcoming the difficulty of producing PANI nanofibers. The morphologies of the prepared nanocomposites were fully examined by SEM, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy and X-ray diffraction measurements. Results indicated that the blended PVA/CS/PANI-based nanofibers exhibited better size morphology with smaller diameter than (PVA/PANI) and pure polyaniline. Batch experiments were conducted using the prepared (PVA/PANI/CS) composite to study its affinity for dye decolorization. Different factors affecting the adsorption process such as contact time, initial dye concentration, temperature and pH were optimized. The maximum percentage removal was found to be 96% at 300 rpm using adsorbent dose of 60 mg and temperature of 25°C and initial dye concentration 50 ppm. Also, the adsorption isotherms, kinetics and thermodynamics for the removal process were studied. The adsorption process followed Freundlich isotherm and pseudo-first order kinetics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]