Zhang Huimei, Liu Hong, Zhang Wenwen, Wang Lijuan, Qiu Wenxi
School of Pharmacy, Chongqing Medical and Pharmaceutical College, Chongqing, 401331, People's Republic of China.
Sci Rep. 2025 Apr 30;15(1):15203. doi: 10.1038/s41598-025-99384-z.
Textile is one of the industrial sectors producing multiple types of polluting substances, including dyes and nitrate. Lately, the realization of pollutant degradation through electrochemical treatment has been applied more commonly. However, in textile wastewater a high level of organic dyes can inhibit the electrocatalytic reduction of nitrate. Hence, we construct a tandem reactor to synchronously remove the organic dyes and nitrate contaminants as well as yield the value-added ammonia product from the simulated textile wastewater. The tandem reactor shows impressive efficiency towards photocatalytic decomposing methylene blue (MB), methyl orange (MO) and methyl violet (MV) (~ 100%) coupled with NO-to-NH conversion (maximum NH evolution value of 44.3 μg cm) under different bias potentials. Liquid chromatography mass spectroscopy (LC-MS) has been applied to understand the dyes degradation pathways. The dyes are oxidized by active species hydroxyl radicals ·OH and h under irradiation. The electrons are transferred to the cathode for nitrate reduction. In addition, the tandem reactor displays favorable energy consumption for the simulated textile wastewater treatment. Moreover, mung bean germination experiments were complemented for toxicity assessment of the system. This study presents a conceptual tandem reactor for the synergistic regulation of complex pollutants removal processes, highlighting the potential of photoelectrochemical (PEC) and electrochemical catalysis coupled to advance sustainable wastewater management technologies.
纺织业是产生多种污染物质的工业部门之一，这些污染物质包括染料和硝酸盐。最近，通过电化学处理实现污染物降解的方法得到了更广泛的应用。然而，在纺织废水中，高浓度的有机染料会抑制硝酸盐的电催化还原。因此，我们构建了一个串联反应器，用于同步去除模拟纺织废水中的有机染料和硝酸盐污染物，并产生增值氨产品。该串联反应器在不同偏置电位下，对光催化分解亚甲基蓝（MB）、甲基橙（MO）和甲基紫（MV）（~100%）以及NO到NH的转化（最大NH释放值为44.3μg cm）表现出令人印象深刻的效率。液相色谱质谱联用仪（LC-MS）已被用于了解染料的降解途径。在光照下，染料被活性物种羟基自由基·OH和h氧化。电子转移到阴极进行硝酸盐还原。此外，该串联反应器在处理模拟纺织废水时显示出良好的能耗。此外，还进行了绿豆发芽实验以评估该系统的毒性。本研究提出了一种用于协同调节复杂污染物去除过程的概念性串联反应器，突出了光电化学（PEC）和电化学催化相结合以推进可持续废水管理技术的潜力。
