Fibrous cellulose nanoarchitectonics on N-doped Carbon-based Metal-Free catalytic nanofilter for highly efficient advanced oxidation process

Abstract

N-doped carbon materials have been considered as promising efficient and environment-friendly catalysts for sulfate radical-based advanced oxidation processes (SR-AOPs). Herein, we first report a facile strategy to prepare nanoporous N-doped carbon nanofilters (NCNFs) using cellulose nanofibers (CNFs) and metal–organic framework (MOF) as the superior metal-free catalytic for SR-AOPs. In this work, CNFs are employed as nanoporous templates and binders to fix ZIF-8 for fabricating ZIF-8@CNF membrane, and the as-prepared membrane was converted into NCNFs by a simple pyrolysis process. To evaluate the catalytic degradation performance of the NCNFs, methylene blue (MB) was chosen as a model contaminant. It is found that the NCNFs demonstrate a remarkable efficiency for MB removal by peroxymonosulfate (PMS) activation, and 96 % of MB (10 mg/L) was degraded in 15 min. The catalytic reaction and process including removal and washing are very simple and easy because the nanoporous N-doped carbons are fixed on CNF-derived networks. Furthermore, the reaction parameters including reaction temperature, pH, and catalyst/PMS dosage are also investigated. In addition, a series of radical quenching experiments reveal that non-radical mechanism is responsible for the degradation of MB. Importantly, the NCNFs membrane showed a good reusability by the annealing process and it can serve as a catalytic filter in practical organic dye remediation application. This present work shows that MOF derived metal-free carbon membranes have a promising avenue as catalysts for organic dye degradation and water remediation.