Development of titania based Ceramic reinforced polymer Composites for sensing and removal Of air pollutants

Abstract

The objective of the present work is to develop polymer nanocomposites based on advanced ceramic materials such as MesoporousTitania(MT) and Lanthanum Titanate(LTO). Flexible, transparent, environmental friendly polymers such as Polyacrylonitrile(PAN) and polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) are used. The nanocomposites were developed in such a way to function as particulate filter and gas (CO2) sensor, which are highly desirable at present situation in environmental applications. In addition to nanocomposites, phosphazene nanotubes added LTO reinforced PVA composites were developed and studied for dielectric properties in the presence of gas environment. Also, an attempt has been made to study the change in resistivity of the developed composites in the presence of CO2 using the low cost technique designed in this work. In order to develop MesoporousTitania(MT) embedded polyacrylonitrile (PAN) nanofibrous membrane for particulate matter filtration, the MT was prepared initially through sol hydrothermal method. Then, prepared MT was added in different weight ratios with PAN solution and subjected to electro-spinning. The resulted electro-spun MT embedded PAN (MT/PAN) nanofibrous composite membranes were benefited with inclusive homogenous distribution of MT within PAN comprisingof high porosity and air-permeability. The overall filtration efficiency of the developed composite membrane reached 96.4 % without pressure drop for 15 % MT embedded PAN nanofibrous composite. Further, the detailed study on filtration efficiency was undertaken with various size particulate matter and optimized with different process variables including MesoporousTitania(MT), areal density (GSM) and spinning time (h). newline