Design of Cellulose Acetate Electrospun Membranes Loaded with N-doped Carbon Quantum Dots for Water Remediation

This work focuses on the use of Nitrogen-doped carbon quantum dots (CQDs) from pinewood sawdust loaded in cellulose acetate (CA) membranes produced by electrospinning. These membranes were tested for the removal of two organic dyes, methylene blue (MB) and methylene violet (MV), from water effluents. The adsorption capacity of electrospun adsorbent significantly improved due to the presence of a low concentration of CDQs (1% w/w). In comparison with CA electrospun membranes without CQDs, the loaded membranes showed an improvement of the adsorption capacity equal to 160% in the case of MB and 300% in the case of MV. Therefore, the presence of CQDs from sawdust noticeably enhanced the adsorption of cationic dyes onto polymeric membranes. The designed systems exploit the adsorption features of micrometric-sized fibrous mats to remove organic pollutants from industrial textile wastewater effectively. It is worth mentioning that composite adsorbent systems can be efficiently applied to real industrial cases because of the possibility of reusing them and opening the route to the fabrication of novel and highly performant adsorbents.