Phosphorus removal performance of spark deposited iron and aluminium metal oxide nanoparticles on polyacrylonitrile membranes

Eutrophication of water bodies including lake and river is becoming increasingly serious, and controlling phosphate concentration in such water bodies is the key to solving the eutrophication problem. Adsorption technology provides a more practical solution for phosphate removal due to the advantages of easy operation, low cost, no highly toxic by-products and recyclability. Therefore, in this study, the adsorption method was used to adsorb phosphate from water bodies and the concentration of phosphate after adsorption was determined. Iron-aluminium oxide nanoparticles were prepared by electric spark ablation, and then iron and aluminium oxide composite nanoparticles were deposited on polyacrylonitrile (PAN) membranes using electrostatic spinning to obtain FeAl-ESA@PAN fibrous membranes for phosphorus removal from aqueous environments.Due to the nano constraints of the fibre membrane, the problem of unfavorable recycling and reuse of metal oxides in powder form is effectively solved. It was modified by using magnetic medium Fe, which not only improved the adsorption performance and service life of the adsorbent material, but also reduced the production cost. The adsorption experiments showed that the adsorption capacity of FeAl-ESA@PAN for phosphate was 21.05 mg·g ^− 1 and the variables such as reaction time, pH and coexisting ions had a significant effect on the adsorption capacity. The influence of FeAl-ESA@PAN on phosphorus removal from lake water was investigated for Qilu Lake (Yunnan, China) as an example, and the total phosphorus removal rate observed was 94.01%, and a series of characterisations indicated that electrostatic adsorption, hydrogen bonding, complexation, and ion-exchange were the main mechanisms of phosphorus removal.