ORIGINAL PAPER An effective removal of organic dyes using surface functionalized cellulose acetate/graphene oxide composite nanofibers Nada M. Aboamera . Alaa Mohamed . Ahmed Salama . T. A. Osman . A. Khattab Received: 10 March 2018 / Accepted: 22 May 2018 Ó Springer Science+Business Media B.V., part of Springer Nature 2018 Abstract An effective photocatalyst obtained from composite nanofibers CA/GO fabricated by electro- spinning technique followed by chemical crosslinking surface modified TiO 2 nanoparticles (NPs) was used for removing the organic dyes Indigo carmine (IC) and Methylene blue (MB) from an aqueous solution under UV irradiation light. The crystalline structure and morphologies of CA–GO/TiO 2 –NH 2 composite nano- fibers were characterized by SEM, TEM, XRD, and FTIR. The prepared CA–GO/TiO 2 –NH 2 composite nanofibers displayed significantly enhanced photocat- alytic activity for photodegradation the organic dyes IC and MB under UV irradiation after 150 and 250 min respectively. The pH value of the solution was studied from 2 to 8 and obtained results showed a clear improvement of photocatalytic activity at pH 2. The results indicated that the activated CA–GO/TiO 2 – NH 2 composite nanofibers functioned as an adsorbent for the removal of IC and MB from aqueous solutions. In addition, the results showed a high adsorption capacity remain up to 65% after five consecutive capacity cycles. Keywords Graphene oxide Á Cellulose acetate Á Composite nanofibers Á Photocatalytic Á Organic contaminants Á Electrospinning Introduction Colored wastewater is a very serious environmental problem. Pigment and organic dye water pollutants are mainly in effluents from industries such as leather, pharmaceutical, textile, rubber, cosmetics, and food industries (Haque et al. 2003; Pan et al. 2010; Mohamed et al. 2016a, b, 2017b, c; Salama et al. 2017). The high toxicity wastewater organic dyes such as indigo carmine and methylene blue which contain aromatic rings cause human health hazards and several environmental pollutions (Gopiraman et al. 2013; N. M. Aboamera Á A. Mohamed (&) Production Engineering and Printing Technology Department, Akhbar El Yom Academy, Giza 12655, Egypt e-mail: alakha@kth.se A. Mohamed Egypt Nanotechnology Center, EGNC, Cairo University, Giza 12613, Egypt A. Mohamed Membrane Technology Department, Institute of Functional Interfaces (IFG), Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), 76344 Eggenstein-Leopoldshafen, Germany A. Salama Department of Production Engineering and Manufacturing Technology, Modern Academy for Engineering and Technology in Maadi, Cairo, Egypt T. A. Osman Á A. Khattab Mechanical Design and Production Engineering Department, Cairo University, Giza 12613, Egypt 123 Cellulose https://doi.org/10.1007/s10570-018-1870-8