Electrospun Polyurethane Fibers for Absorption of Volatile Organic Compounds from Air

Abstract

Electrospun polyurethane fibers for removal of volatile organic compounds (VOC) from air with rapid VOC absorption and desorption have been developed.Polyurethanes based on 4,4-methylenebis(phenylisocyanate) (MDI) and aliphatic isophorone diisocyanate as the hard segments and butanediol and tetramethylene glycol as the soft segments were electrospun from their solutions in N,N-dimethylformamide to form micron-sized fibers. Although activated carbon possessed a many-fold higher surface area than the polyurethane fiber meshes, the sorption capacity of the polyurethane fibers was found to be similar to that of activated carbon specifically designed for vapor adsorption. Furthermore, in contrast to VOC sorption on activated carbon, where complete regeneration of the adsorbent was not possible, the polyurethane fibers demonstrated a completely reversible absorption and desorption, with desorption obtained by a simple purging with nitrogen at room temperature. The fibers possessed a high affinity toward toluene and chloroform, but aliphatic hexane lacked the attractive interactions with the polyurethane chains and therefore was less strongly absorbed. The selectivity of the polyurethane fibers toward different vapors, along with the ease of regeneration, makes them attractive materials for VOC filtration.

Surface modification of electrospun polyester nanofibers with cyclodextrin polymer for the removal of phenanthrene from aqueous solution

“…It has been reported that electrospun nanofibrous mats are quite effective for particulate separation [2,3], liquid filtration [1][2][3], waste vapor treatment [4,5] as well as desalination [6]. Electrospinning has advantage over conventional membrane production techniques, since variety of functional nanofibrous materials can be easily obtained in the form of nonwoven membranes which can be readily used as a filtering material [1][2][3].…”

Electrospinning for nano- to mesoscale photonic structures

“…Biologically, hybrid nanofiber scaffolds have provided a cell niche conducive to improved attachment, proliferation, and cell differentiation [190][191][192][193][194][195][196][197][198], as well as targeted drug delivery carriers [198][199][200][201][202][203][204][205][206]. Filtration using ONFs [207] equipped with activated carbon has revealed adsorption of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) present in the air [208][209][210], and Scholten et al reported that adsorption and desorption of VOC by electrospun nanofibrous membranes (ENMs) were faster than that of conventional activated carbon [208]. Such examples demonstrate the pervasive nature of ONF systems, which will continue to provide innovative enhancement of technologies we use every day.…”

Molecular entrapment of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) by electrospun cyclodextrin nanofibers

“…Active carbon is the commonly used material to reduce the VOCs degree in the surrounding due to its high surface area and porous structure (Bradley and Rand, 1995;Bradley et al, 2011;Majumdar et al, 2001;Vermisoglou et al, 2007). However, the carbon based absorbents/adsorbents are generally applied in the powder or granular form and this creates challenges during their use in terms of handling and reusability (Scholten et al, 2011). For this reason, there are approaches in the literature including the formation of flexible nano-scaled matrix which were obtained with the incorporation of electrospinning technique (Bai et al, 2013a(Bai et al, , 2013bKatepalli et al, 2011;Kim et al, 2013;Lee et al, 2010;Scholten et al, 2011).…”

“…From this point of view, there are studies in the literature reporting that, the electrospun NF were experienced as membrane system for VOCs filtration purposes. For instance, Scholten et al firstly used the electrospun polyurethane fibers for the removal of VOCs (Scholten et al, 2011). In another related study, reduced graphene oxide (RGO)/carbon composite ultrafine fibers were developed by using electrospinning and applying consequent carbonization to evaluate their VOCs adsorption performance (Bai et al, 2013a).…”