Removal of ketoprofen and propranolol in an ultrafiltration-MXene (Ti3C2/ V2C) hybrid system

초록

MXenes, known for their high stability and large specific surface areas, have been extensively studied as effective nano-adsorbents. This study investigated the removal of contaminants of emerging concern, ketoprofen (KP) and propranolol (PRP), using an ultrafiltration (UF)-MXene hybrid system. A comparative analysis of the preadsorption and non-pre-adsorption configurations was conducted, leading to the selection of the non-pre-adsorption system because of its relatively high flux and decent retention. In this study, single-layered Ti3C2 (SL-Ti3C2), the most widely used MXene, and multi-layered V2C MXene (ML-V2C), which has been rarely explored, were incorporated into the hybrid system. A comparative evaluation was conducted among three systems: UF only, UF + ML-V2C, and UF + SL-Ti3C2. The removal efficiencies of KP using UF only, UF + ML-V2C, and UF + SL-Ti3C2were 4.04 %, 8.03 %, and 3.34 %, respectively, indicating no significant improvement in KP removal across the three systems. However, the UF + SL-Ti3C2hybrid system exhibited a significantly higher PRP average removal efficiency (58.0 %) compared to UF only (9.55 %) and UF + ML-V2C (13.5 %). While no significant differences in the normalized flux at a volume concentration factor of 10 (recovery = 90 %) were observed between the UF only (0.913) and UF-MXene hybrid systems (0.833) at pH 7, the normalized flux of the hybrid system (0.933) was notably higher than that of the UF system (0.709) under acidic conditions (pH 3.5). Adsorption experiments were conducted to elucidate the removal mechanisms under different pH conditions, demonstrating that electrostatic interactions play a dominant role in contaminant removal by MXene.

키워드