Sorption properties of fabricated film from cotton gin trash

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.matpr.2019.11.065Get rights and content

Abstract

Cotton gin trash (CGT), is an abundant waste material produced during the ginning process of cotton fibre. In this current work, biodegradable films were prepared from the whole CGT through mixing with formic acid in a single-step procedure. The preliminary results showed that the fabricated film had a higher water absorbency compared to the raw material, proportional to the amount of CGT present in the film. Furthermore, the fabricated film had notable dye removal properties comparable with the dye adsorption of granular activated carbon. The initial outcome suggests the potential application of CGT films as an adsorbent material, e.g., filter for dye separation from wastewater.

Introduction

Dyes are the colouring compounds that have extensive uses in manufacturing textile, paper, plastic, cosmetics and pharmaceuticals [1]. Industrial dyeing processes often consume a large amount of dyes and also generate a massive amount of dye wastewater. The estimated demand for dyes per annum is more than 7 hundred thousand tons of which 10–15% is released into wastewater [2]. Dyes can be either of natural or synthetic origin, but the synthetic dye is used widely and can often have a toxic effect [2], [3], [4].

Generally, there are different treatment approaches to remove dye from wastewater, including chemical coagulation [5], oxidation [6], electrolysis [7] and adsorption methods [8]. While adsorption method is proven as a simple and efficient technique for the separation of dye from wastewater [9], natural materials are attracting great attention as adsorbent due to their lower cost, non-hazardous nature and abundance [10]. Among natural resources, activated carbon is widely used as an adsorbent to remove dye from wastewater [11]. However, using natural waste materials for dye adsorption can double the benefit (waste to treat waste) for the same purpose.

The ginning process generates a considerable amount of trash materials i.e., around one-third, by weight per cotton bale, of cotton gin trash (CGT) [12]. The CGT mainly consists of short fibres (linters), burrs, sticks, leaves, seeds, hulls, dust and fine woody particles. Earlier, different fractional parts of CGT (e.g., burrs, seed hulls and linters) have been used in combination with synthetic polymers to produce composite materials [13]. However, separation of fractional parts of CGT is practically challenging as they are entangled in fibres. Though utilizing the whole CGT for material preparation would be a more convenient method, using CGT components all together to produce any polymeric material is a very new area of research [14].

Over the years, lignocellulose materials have been used to separate dye and metal ions from wastewater which indicates that CGT can also be used as an adsorbent material [15]. However, it would be difficult to remove CGT from the water after the adsorption process due to its heterogeneous form. Therefore, transforming CGT to a convenient shape like the film was required for the adsorption process. Therefore, the objective of this work was to primarily examine the sorption behaviour of the fabricated CGT film to water, moisture and its removal tendency towards dye. In this work, the CGT films were prepared by mixing the whole components of CGT with formic acid (FA). Recollection of acid vapour was not performed in our lab-scale arrangement, however, the recollection of formic acid vapour is well reported using a closed-loop system which points towards the practicality of this method in large scale use [16]. Along with the film fabrication, the morphology, chemical structure, wettability, moisture absorption, biodegradability and dye adsorption properties of the films were investigated. Worth to mention that adsorption is usually a physical phenomenon. The major difference between “adsorption” and “absorption” is that adsorption is surface sorption and the absorption is a bulk process when substance enters the volume of the materials. Since the moisture regain and moisture content evaluate the penetration of the moisture and water molecules into the bulk of the material, we have used the ‘absorption’ term for discussing the moisture and wettability of the film. In case of dye removal, dye molecules interact with the film surface. Therefore, we have used the ‘adsorption’ term for discussing the dye removal properties. Methylene Blue (MB) and Acid Blue 25 (AB) were selected to perform dye removal experiments as both of these dyes have potential uses in wide application. Moreover, as shown in Fig. 1, these two dyes are from different ionic groups, where MB is cationic and AB anionic dye. This is useful to identify the adsorption potential of CGT precisely.

Section snippets

Materials

Cotton gin trash (CGT) used in the current study was Australian cotton waste, collected from the Cotton ginning facilities, Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), Geelong Waurn Ponds Campus, Victoria, Australia. For the fabrication of CGT film, 99% formic acid was purchased from Thermo Fisher Scientific, Scoresby Victoria, Australia. Methylene Blue (MB) and Acid Blue 25 (AB) dyes were purchased from Sigma Aldrich, Australia. The activated carbon (AC) used for the

Morphology

The morphology of CGT powder and the fabricated films is shown in Fig. 2. The presence of random sized particles (including fibre) was observed in the CGT powder as shown in Fig. 2a and b. This was highly predictable as CGT is a combination of heterogeneous fractions. The large particles and fibres were also seen in the surface of the films fabricated from both 5% (Sample A, Fig. 2c) and 10% CGT (Sample B, Fig. 2d). Besides, there were no significant differences in the morphology of Sample A

Conclusions

In this work, cotton gin trash (CGT), the lignocellulose waste material was used to fabricate film, where water and dye absorption properties of the fabricated film were investigated. While the FT-IR results suggested that the chemical structure of CGT was not affected by the film fabrication process, the water absorption results confirmed an overall increase in absorption properties of CGT films. The film with a greater amount of CGT showed higher absorption properties to water and moisture

Declaration of Competing Interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Acknowledgements

The current study was supported by Deakin University Postgraduate Research Scholarship (DUPRS) awarded to the first author and was carried out with the support of the Deakin Advanced Characterization Facility.

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