Improved photocatalytic activity of nonwoven fabric coated with graphene by a novel elevated temperature padding method

Highlights: • A novel "ETPM" enhanced the graphene oxide adsorption on cotton nonwoven fabric. • The graphene coated nonwoven exhibit excellent dye removal with 93% efficiency in 30 min under UV light. • The developed material can be effectively used for five continuous cycles to remove more than 70% dye. Wastewaters from dye-utilizing industries cause a considerable threat to the life and the environment in and surrounded by the water streams. Therefore, it is becoming a growing concern for sustainability of the environments and the life on the earth for last few decades. In this work, a nonwoven fabric was coated with graphene oxide nanosheets (GON) by a novel elevated temperature padding method (ETPM) of coating, followed by chemical reduction using hydrazine hydrate. The coated fabric could effectively remove 93% of the dye particles in 30 min from water, which is considerably lesser time than that taken by a fabric coated by conventional padding method, where the complete dye removal took more than 120 min. Through ETPM, a higher amount of GON could be fixed on the fabric surface, which resulted in a higher photocatalytic activity (PCA) and the same fabric could be used continuously to remove 73% of the dye, even in the fifth reuse cycle. Successful formation of GON was assessed by atomic force microscopy (AFM) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM) techniques. Whereas the successful reduction of GON to the reduced graphene oxide nanosheets (rGON) on the coated fabric was tested by scanning electron microscopy (SEM), Fourier-transform infrared (FTIR) and x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS).