The Preparation of Polyvinyl Chloride Nanofiber Membrane by Melt Electrospinning for Ester Plasticizer Adsorption

ABSTRACT Ester plasticizers are widely used in plastic products and can cause irreversible reproductive health damage and carcinogenic risk with prolonged exposure or ingress into the body, especially in drinking water. Therefore, it is urgent to study hydrophobic and lipophilic ester plasticizer filtration membranes. Due to the molecular polarity characteristics of polyvinyl chloride (PVC), it is more likely to attract ester plasticizers compared to other materials. Nanofiber membranes prepared from PVC may have good filtration effects on ester plasticizers. In this study, a green preparation method of PVC nanofiber membrane for adsorption of ester plasticizers is proposed, and the process includes gel preparation, melt electrospinning, and extraction. Extracted melt electrospun membrane shows excellent mechanical properties, with a tensile strength of 35.011 MPa, an elongation at break of 60%, and an average fiber diameter of 952 nm. The average adsorption multiplicity of the extracted fiber membrane for ester plasticizers was 9.32 g/g. The adsorption efficiency was 64.9% after 5 times reuse. The static adsorption multiplicity data of this study is 31 times higher than that of activated carbon materials and 23.3 times higher than that of reported resin materials.