Designing and manufacturing of portable nanofiber systems for continuous water supplies in water-scarce locations

Abstract

Water scarcity has become a challenging issue since it is extremely essential in our daily life. Lack of pure water in developing countries has marred human life and created various problems related to health, such as diarrhea, cholera, typhoid, dysentery, malaria, jaundice, and waterborne disease; therefore, it is very important that water must be pure and available in abundance amount in all parts of the world. New developments in filtration technology have reinvigorated interest in engineered nanosized materials such as electrospun nanofiber membrane for providing potable water at much lower cost and with minimum investment. Membrane technology has been in use for several decades and has played a crucial role in water treatment. Polymer nanofibers produced via an electrospinning process is an ideal method of fabricating electrospun nanofiber membrane for water filtration. In this research, Nanofibers were produced from two polymers such as polyacrylonitrile (PAN) and polyethylene glycol (PEG), while Dimethylformamide (DMF) was used as a solvent. The electrospun nanofibrous membranes (ENMs) thus produced via electrospinning possess super hydrophilic features and can be used for water filtration. Different water samples such as pond water, jet cutter water, tap water, deionized (DI) water, and carbon black (CB) deionized water were used in this experiment. The water samples were tested for turbidity, total dissolved solids (TDS), electrical conductivity (EC), pH, and refractive index.