Superwettable recycled polyethylene terephthalate/cobalt zeolitic imidazolate framework membrane for extraction of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons from water samples.

A significant challenge in membrane production is the need for affordable materials that provide high efficiency for their designated applications. Employing recycled materials in membrane manufacturing is viewed as a promising solution to tackle this challenge. In this work, a superwettable polyethylene terephthalate membrane modified with cobalt zeolitic imidazolate framework (PET/Co ZIF) is prepared for the first time from recycled plastic mineral water bottles and used to extract polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) from aqueous samples followed by high-performance liquid chromatography with UV detection (HPLC-UV). The characterization of functional groups, crystalline structure, elemental analysis, morphology, and wettability of membrane was performed by Fourier transform-infrared (FT-IR), X-ray powder diffraction (XRD), field emission-scanning electronic microscope (FE-SEM), energy dispersion spectroscopy (EDS) and contact angles techniques, respectively. The effect of type of eluent and membrane was investigated and optimized. After studying the effect of other factors named volume of eluent, sample pass cycles and ionic strength of sample solution by Box-Behnken design (BBD) and response surface methodology (RSM), a linear range of 0.1-600 μg/L with a coefficient of determination (R²) of more than 0.9982 was obtained for fluorene, phenanthrene, pyrene and chrysene. The limit of detection for the mentioned compounds was in the range of 0.05-0.34 μg/L. This method was successfully applied to determine PAHs in river water and wastewater samples. The relative recovery of more than 88.0 % and the error of less than 5.7 % indicate the applicability of this method.