Poly (vinyl alcohol)/montmorillonite clay/poly (1-vinylpyrrolidone-co-vinyl acetate) composite films for the effective removal of methylene blue

In this work, we employed the solvent casting process to produce novel composite films using poly (vinyl alcohol) (PVA), Na-montmorillonite (MMT), and poly (1-vinylpyrrolidone-co-vinyl acetate) (PVP-co-VAc). The objective of this work is to examine the effects of PVP-co-VAc concentration on the mechanical, optical, and surface wettability properties of PVA/MMT films. The developed films exhibited secondary interactions between the film components, as confirmed by the FT-IR analysis. The incorporation of PVP-co-VAc significantly enhanced film transparency and elasticity while reducing the tensile strength by 44.54%. The hydrophobic surface of the composite film has been converted to a hydrophilic one and has shown excellent swelling efficiency of 102.08% by the effect of PVP-co-VAc. Additionally, the produced composite film demonstrated outstanding methylene blue adsorption capacity (97.87%) within 40 min at ambient temperature. These results suggest that fabricated composite films will become a promising material for removing industrially toxic dyes from aqueous solutions.