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A bio-based nanofibre hydrogel filter for sustainable water purification

Nature Sustainability volume 7, pages 168–178 (2024)Cite this article

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Abstract

Removal of suspended solids (SS) is a prerequisite for delivering clean water. However, removal of ultrafine SS during water purification in a cost-effective manner remains a global challenge. Here we develop an injection-driven filter system that integrates a fully bio-based biodegradable nanofibre hydrogel film with a syringe to remove ultrafine SS for portable and sustainable water purification. The hydrogel film features a densely stacked and entangled nanofibre network, enabling it to reject ultrafine SS with a cut-off size of ∼10 nm at a ∼100% rejection efficiency, greatly surpassing commercial filter papers and microporous membranes. During operation, the flux of the injection-driven filter system reaches 90.6 g cm−2 h−1, which is 7.2 times higher than that of commercial polycarbonate ultrafiltration membrane operated under the same conditions. Moreover, this filter system demonstrates good scalability and reusability, with low cost and reduced environmental footprint. The versatility of this filter system is further proven by successful clean water production from various difficult-to-purify water resources, including muddy water, river water, dirty water from melted snow and nanoplastic-contaminated water. Overall, this work provides a facile yet cost-effective tool for sustainable water purification.

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Fig. 1: Features of BNHFs in filtering SS-contaminated water.
Fig. 2: Assembly of the BNHF system.
Fig. 3: SS rejection.
Fig. 4: Application of BNHF in practice.
Fig. 5: Particle recycling, biodegradation and value comparison.

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Data availability

All data needed to evaluate the conclusions in the paper are present in the paper and/or the Supplementary Information. Source data are provided with this paper.

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Acknowledgements

W.C. acknowledges support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 31922056) and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (No. 2572021CG01). G.Y. acknowledges support from the Welch Foundation F-1861, Norman Hackerman Award in Chemical Research and Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award.

Author information

Author notes

  1. These authors contributed equally: Meihui Jiang, Chuyan Jing, Chuxin Lei.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Bio-based Material Science and Technology of Ministry of Education, Northeast Forestry University, Harbin, P. R. China

    Meihui Jiang, Chuyan Jing, Xue Han, Qing Li, Haipeng Yu, Shouxin Liu, Jian Li & Wenshuai Chen

  2. Materials Science and Engineering Program and Walker Department of Mechanical Engineering, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, USA

    Chuxin Lei & Guihua Yu

  3. College of Materials Science and Engineering, Central South University of Forestry and Technology, Changsha, P. R. China

    Yiqiang Wu

  4. School of Physical Science and Technology, ShanghaiTech University, Shanghai, P. R. China

    Shengjie Ling

  5. Key Laboratory of Organic Optoelectronics and Molecular Engineering of the Ministry of Education, Department of Chemistry, Tsinghua University, Beijing, P. R. China

    Yingying Zhang

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Contributions

W.C. and G.Y. conceived the idea and directed the project. M.J. and C.J. performed most of the experiments. C.L. participated in most data and mechanism analysis. X.H. and Q.L. participated in the nanoparticle filtration experiments. Y.W., S. Ling and Y.Z. participated in the analysis of the filtration mechanism. H.Y., S. Liu and J.L. commented on the paper. W.C. and G.Y. wrote the paper. All authors agreed with the final version of the paper.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Wenshuai Chen or Guihua Yu.

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Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

Supplementary Tables 1 and 2 and Figs. 1–30.

Reporting Summary

Supplementary Video 1

The appearance of a BNHF shows that it is a very convenient filter.

Supplementary Video 2

X-ray micro-CT investigation revealing the three-dimensional structure of HF-5-10 on a microporous membrane.

Source data

Source Data Fig. 3

Unprocessed UV–vis spectra data of the feed and filtrate of 30∼50 nm TiO2 nanoparticle water dispersion filtered through a microporous membrane or an HF-5-10 by manual pressure. Unprocessed UV–vis spectra data of the feed and filtrate of 20∼80 nm ATO nanoparticle water dispersion filtered through a G-HF-40-15 by manual pressure.

Source Data Fig. 4

Unprocessed UV–vis spectra data of the feed and filtrate of soil-contaminated water and dirty snow water filtered through an HF-5-10. Unprocessed UV–vis spectra data of two times filtration of 30 nm polystyrene nanoplastic water dispersions with different concentrations filtered through an HF-10-15. Unprocessed UV–vis spectra data of the feed and filtrate of dirty river water filtered through an HF-5-1000.

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Jiang, M., Jing, C., Lei, C. et al. A bio-based nanofibre hydrogel filter for sustainable water purification. Nat Sustain 7, 168–178 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-023-01264-9

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