Lu Chao, Hu Chun, Wu Junmei, Rong Hongwei, Lyu Lai
Key Laboratory for Water Quality and Conservation of the Pearl River Delta, Ministry of Education, Institute of Environmental Research at Greater Bay, Guangzhou University, Guangzhou 510006, China.
School of Civil Engineering, Guangzhou University, Guangzhou 510006, China.
Environ Sci Technol. 2024 Dec 31;58(52):23241-23250. doi: 10.1021/acs.est.4c09385. Epub 2024 Dec 16.
Natural self-purification of water is limited by mass transfer processes between inert oxygen (O) and stable pollutants. This process must rely on large energy inputs and resource consumption, which have become a global challenge in the environmental field. Here, we greatly amplify this self-purification effect of natural dissolved oxygen (DO) by nonexpendable HO triggering a DRC catalyst with a micro-potential difference surface. This low-energy strategy is mainly realized by lowering the activation energy barriers of endogenous substances and simultaneously opening the mass transfer channels over the Cu-ZnO surface. In this way, pollutant electrons and energy are efficiently utilized to activate DO. Surprisingly, the rapid degradation of the pollutants is accompanied by HO consumption of only 2.6% at most, sometimes even reaching zero consumption, with the instantaneous absolute amount of HO exceeding 100%. The typical endocrine disruptor BPA has been proven to be harmlessly degraded to small molecule alcohols and acids by self-purification amplification, including cleavage of stable contaminants on the catalyst surface, activation of natural DO, and enhancement of mass transfer between them.
水的自然自净受到惰性氧（O）与稳定污染物之间传质过程的限制。这一过程必须依赖大量的能量输入和资源消耗，这已成为环境领域的一项全球性挑战。在此，我们通过不可消耗的羟基自由基（HO）触发具有微电位差表面的双反应中心（DRC）催化剂，极大地增强了天然溶解氧（DO）的这种自净效应。这种低能量策略主要通过降低内源性物质的活化能垒并同时打开铜-氧化锌（Cu-ZnO）表面的传质通道来实现。通过这种方式，污染物的电子和能量被有效利用以激活溶解氧。令人惊讶的是，污染物的快速降解过程中，羟基自由基的消耗最多仅为2.6%，有时甚至达到零消耗，而羟基自由基的瞬时绝对量超过100%。典型的内分泌干扰物双酚A（BPA）已被证明通过自净放大作用无害地降解为小分子醇和酸，包括催化剂表面稳定污染物的裂解、天然溶解氧的活化以及它们之间传质的增强。
