Fabrication of aligned carbon nanofiber doped with SnO2-Sb for efficient electrochemical removal of tetracycline

Abstract

In recent years, tetracycline (TC) has become an emerging refractory antibiotic pollutant due to excessive use and abuse. The aim of this work is to prepare aligned carbon nanofibrous (ACFs) membrane by electrospinning technology and then dope with SnO2-Sb to electrocatalytic degrade TC. The in-situ growth of SnO2-Sb on the carbon nanofiber surface to fabricate SnO2-Sb/ACFs membrane can increase the oxygen evolution reaction potential and improve conductivity. And the SnO2-Sb/ACFs membrane was used as the anodic membrane of a flow-through mode electrochemical membrane reactor to remove TC in aqueous solutions. The outstanding degradation performance of SnO2-Sb/ACFs membrane on TC was investigated systematically. The results show that the 3-layer SnO2-Sb/ACFs-3 membranes can effectively degrade 20 mg/L TC at an applied potential of 2.5 V. Moreover, SnO2-Sb/ACFs-3 membrane shows excellent degradation stability after 10 cycles of degradation experiments. For exploring the possible TC degradation pathways, HPLC-MS was used to identify the main intermediates during the electrochemical oxidation process. The anodic membrane electrode prepared in this work puts forward a new idea for the safe and efficient degradation of TC.