Surface Modification of Polypropylene Nonwoven with Acrylic Acid using Plasma treatment and Evaluation of Basic Dye Removal Properties

In this study, the surface of polypropylene nonwoven was grafted with acrylic acid. Oxygen plasma treatment was used to create the peroxide radicals required to initiate the grafting of acrylic acid onto the fibers. Several analyses including ATR-FTIR, FESEM, EDS, XPS and AFM were performed on raw, plasma treated and acrylic acid grafted samples. All tests approved the grafting of acrylic acid on the surface of polypropylene nonwoven. The prepared product (AA-PP) was tested for removal of cationic dye from aqueous media. AA-PP removed more than 70% of methylene blue cationic dye from water in pH=11. It was found that the dye adsorption followed Freundlich isotherm. The rates of sorption were found to conform to pseudo-first-order kinetics with good correlation.