Novel route for amine grafting to chitosan electrospun nanofibers membrane for the removal of copper and lead ions from aqueous medium

•A novel route for the synthesis of amine grafted Chitosan nanofibers (AGNFs) with potential as affinity membrane.•The study showed enhanced adsorption capacity for Cu (II) contrary to the conventional adsorbents.•94% aqueous stability of the membrane enhanced its potential as more advanced water purification system. A novel step wise synthetic route was developed to prepare amine grafted nanofibers (AGNFs) affinity membrane. The chemical structure of the nanofibers (NFs) after grafting was studied by acquiring Fourier Transform Infrared (FT-IR) spectra and Carbon, Hydrogen and Nitrogen (CHN) data. The morphology of the NFs before and after grafting was studied by Field Emission Scanning Electron Microscope (FE-SEM). FT-IR and CHN data confirmed the introduction of new functional groups into the primary structure of chitosan (CH). FE-SEM showed denser membrane with no deterioration of the NFs morphology after grafting. The aqueous stability of the membranes was studied in distilled water. The AGNFs membranes showed good aqueous stabilities (with only ∼ 6% loss in weight until 24 h and remained stable thereafter) which was less than the weight loss by glutaraldehyde treated nanofibers (GNFs) (∼44% loss in weight until 24 h) and pristine NFs (100% loss in weight as soon as the NFs were immersed in distilled water). The maximum adsorption (qm) capacity of AGNFs for Cu (II) and Pb (II) was observed to be 166.67 mg.g−1 and 94.34 mg.g−1. The adsorption capacity of the present systems was much higher for Cu (II) when compared to the already existing conventional and chitosan adsorbents. This increased might be related not just to the size, but more potentially to the increase in the number of nitrogen binding sites (chelating sites). Nitrogen donates lone-pair of electrons for chelation. The combination of processing into nano size and amine grafting (AG) has significantly increased the adsorption capacity of CH NFs membrane.