High-performance electrospun polystyrene-based nanofiber membrane for efficient SO2 capture

It is essential to design a stable membrane material to solve the pollution produced by SO2 emissions. This study aims to fabricate polystyrene (PS) nanofiber membranes, which are applied for flue gas desulfurization. PS nanofiber membranes are fabricated via electrospinning with porous polypropylene (PP) membrane as the support and high hydrophobic PS as the main membrane material. The modified membranes are characterized by scanning electron microscopy, true color confocal microscopy and other analytical methods, and the effects of mixed solvent ratio and polymer concentration on the desulfurization performance and on the stability of PS nanofiber membranes are investigated. The results suggest that an optimum hydrophobicity of PS nanofiber membrane is obtained with a water contact angle of 145 degrees, when the polymer concentration is 5 %. The average pore size of PS nanofiber membrane is 1.56 mu m, and the liquid entry pressure of water (LEPw) is 0.26 bar and the roughness of membrane is 5.674 mu m. The desulfurization performance of the PS nanofiber membrane is better than that of the PP membrane. The SO2 absorption flux of the modified membranes keeps at 7.2 x 10-4 to 7.6 x 10-4 mol center dot m- 2 center dot s- 1 during 5 h operating, and SO2 removal efficiency is up to 50 %, which potentially makes contributions to air pollution reduction.