Facile electrospinning-electrospray method to fabricate flexible rice straw-derived cellulose acetate/TiO₂ nanofibrous membrane with excellent photocatalytic performance

A novel and facile electrospinning-electrospray (EE) method that based on electrospinning technique and simultaneous electrospray was proposed to anchor TiO₂ (P25) nanoparticles on the surface of rice straw-derived cellulose acetate (CA) nanofiber, a series of EE-CA/P25 nanofibrous membranes with different P25 dosage were successfully fabricated, which were characterized in terms of SEM, TEM, FI-IR, XRD, DRS, PL, UV–vis and 3D-EMMs, etc. Results confirmed that P25 nanoparticles were anchored on the surface of CA nanofiber. For different organic dyes of Methylene blue (MB), Rhodamine B (RhB) and Methyl orange (MO), EE-CA/P25_(0.05) nanofibrous membrane toward MB dye showed the best photocatalytic degradation efficiency of 99.13 % after 30 min of light exposure. For the different antibiotics of Tetracycline (TC), Ciprofloxacin (CIP) and Sulfamethoxazole (SMX), EE-CA/P25_(0.05) exhibited the best photocatalytic degradation efficiency of 83.59 % for TC after 30 min of light exposure. Moreover, EE-CA/P25_(0.05) exhibited a good antimicrobial efficiency of 98.42 % for E. coli, and maintained 97.49 % after 5 cycles. The reactive radical trapping experiments revealed that h⁺, •O₂⁻, and •OH participated in the reaction, and h⁺ and •O₂⁻ played a major role in the photocatalytic degradation process. Moreover, EE-CA/P25_(0.05) flexible membrane was easy to recycle and transform rice straw waste into treasure.