文摘
Removal of toxic metals from aqueous solutions is of high priority in environmental chemistry. Most of the available techniques for this task are considered expensive; however, the adsorption process has been considered the easiest and the cheapest way of removing toxic metals from aqueous solution. The performance of adsorption setup largely depends on the characteristic of adsorbents. One of these characteristic is availability of large surface area. The more the available sites for chelation, the more the amount of metals removed. Therefore, the production of materials of nanoscale is expedient for adsorption purposes. Electrospinning process is one of the technologies that have been employed to produce polyacrylonitrile nanofibres (PAN-nfs). Moreover, PAN-nfs surfaces have also been chemically modified so as to introduce chelating groups such as amine, carboxyl, imines, etc. Here we review PAN-nfs as metal ion adsorbent. With characteristics such as high surface area as well as good mechanical strength, modified PAN-nfs are considered good adsorbents and have been used to remove toxic metals such as cadmium, lead, chromium, mercury, uranium, silver and copper in different ion states from their aqueous solutions. The ease of immobilization of metal-specific ligands on PAN-nfs has been of great interest in selective extraction of metal ions from their aqueous solutions. Also, toxic metals adsorbed on modified PAN-nfs can be recovered through desorption process using acids or bases of various concentrations.
