Membrane-based wastewater reclamation is of great importance to address the critical challenge of water scarcity. Although membranes are capable of removing a large majority of pollutants from wastewater, they often show unfavorable rejection toward low-concentration organic contaminants with small molecular weight, such as halogenated antibiotics. Electrocatalytic membrane (ECM) can in situ oxidize or reduce the pollutant and alleviate membrane fouling. In this work, we demonstrated a high-performance MoS2 and CNTs modified electrocatalytic membrane toward reducing low-concentration halogenated antibiotic florfenicol. The catalytic performance of MoS2/CNT catalytic membrane at both filtration and batch reactors were systematically investigated, with an emphasis on the effects of mass transfer on such performance. The stability and antifouling performance of MoS2/CNT membrane was also evaluated, with the results that Mo leaching from membrane surface during the catalytic process in filtration reactor. This might be due to MoS2 at the state of 1T is easy to be oxidized. The reasons had been analyzed, and we also proposed a feasible strategy to solve this problem. Besides, the mechanism for florfenicol reduction during the electrochemical catalytic process was fundamentally elucidated. With respect to its application in actual wastewater treatment process, we also investigated its performance under realistic conditions with the water from a river at Berkeley. Overall, this study could provide a new insight in future for the design of electrocatalytic membranes to reduce halogenated pollutants, which is more feasible to be reduced than oxidized. This might greatly facilitate their development in water treatment and halogenated contaminants removal. The results show an important instruction significance for the future development and application of ECM.

MoS2 modified membrane electrode for in situ electrocatalytic dehalogenation of halogenated antibiotics

ACS Fall 2021

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.