Mercury (Hg) ions removal from aqueous solution using thiol functionalized electrospun nanofiber membranes

Environment conditions are going worst day by day, due to high demand of industries and power plants for increasing population. They discharge toxic materials which contaminate environment particularly aqueous environment and pose serious health threats to living organisms. Mercury is one of the most toxic elements found in aqueous systems. The acceptable limit of mercury in drinking water is 2ppb. Its high exposure may cause Neuromuscular changes, emotional changes, tremors, headaches, insomnia, disturbance in sensations, poor performance on tests of mental function, change in nerve response and high exposure may also causes respiratory failure, kidney effect and death. The removal of mercury from water has been achieved by various methods. In this work the electrospun bead free nylon nanofiber membranes were fabricated with thiol functionalized SiO2 and used to remove highly toxic mercury ions from water by adsorption technique. Maximum removal efficiency of 10mg sample is 88.77% which is achieved in 15 minutes at pH-6. Fourier Transform Infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy and Scanning Microscope (SEM) measurements were carried out to characterize the nanofibers. In future this work can be modified to investigate the performance of thiol functionalized SiO2 membrane as filtration system for treating mercury loaded sea and fresh water.