Antibiofouling hollow-fiber membranes for dye rejection by embedding chitosan and silver-loaded chitosan nanoparticles

The removal of toxic dyes from the wastewater and industrial effluents is a major environmental challenge. Various techniques have been employed for the removal of dyes, including the application of nano-sized adsorbents, nanocomposite membranes and photodegradation. Membrane filtration is an alterntive but suffers from drawbacks such as fouling. Here we present a simple approach for the development of antibiofouling membranes based on chitosan. The application of chitosan-based nanoparticles as additives for wastewater treatment is poorly explored. The chitosan and silver-loaded chitosan nanoparticles were synthesized by ionic gelation method and incorporated to fabricate hollow-fiber membranes by dry–wet spinning technique. The prepared membranes were characterized by morphological study, permeability test, antibiofouling study and dye rejection study. The nanocomposite hollow-fiber membranes displayed superior performance than their pristine form. The incorporation of 0.30 weight percent of the chitosan and silver-loaded chitosan nanoparticles into the hollow-fiber membranes enhanced the antifouling property with flux recovery ratio of 81.21 and 86.13%, respectively. The dye rejection results showed maximum rejection of 89.27 and 86.04% for Reactive Black 5 and Reactive Orange 16, respectively. Hence, it can be concluded that hollow-fiber membranes with silver-loaded chitosan nanoparticles are pertinent in developing antibiofouling membranes for the treatment of industrial dye effluents.