Improvement of Zeolite Adsorption Ability for Methylene Blue by Using Electrospinning Cellulose Microfibers as Template

The hierarchical zeolite (ZC) was synthesized by using electrospinning cellulose microfibers (ECM) with three-dimensional network structure as a hard template. The textual and structural properties of the prepared materials were characterized by powder X-ray diffraction patterns (XRD), nitrogen adsorption–desorption analysis, scanning electron microscopy (SEM), Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR) spectroscopy, and TG-DSC. In terms of adsorption properties, the performance was examined by adsorption of methylene blue (MB) on the conventional zeolite (ZA) and ZC. The results showed that ECM templating could significantly increase the mesoporous area and volume of the traditional microporous zeolite, and thus improve the mass transfer performance and adsorption capacity. ZC exhibited much faster and higher MB removal performance than the traditional zeolite with adsorption rate constant and maximum adsorption capacity of ZC approximately 20 and 1.2 times greater than that of ZA. Besides, ZC exhibited better resistance to interfering ions than ZA. Moreover, ZC could be conveniently regenerated by washing with NaCl and the MB adsorption capacity was almost constant in five cycles of the regeneration. These features enable ZC to be an effective and promising adsorbent to remove MB from water.