Low consumption Fenton-like water purification through pollutants as electron donors substituting H2O2 consumption via twofold cation-π over MoS2 cross-linking g-C3N4 hybrid

Abstract

A twofold cation-π-assembled catalyst consisting of honeycomb microsphere-like MoS2 cross-linking g-C3N4 hybrid (HM-MS/CN) is first developed to address the bottleneck of excessive resource and energy consumption in Fenton chemistry. A series of modern characterization techniques combined with theoretical calculation are used to reveal and verify the twofold cation-π interaction (Mo-O-C and Mo-S-C bonding bridges). It is found that the electrons of pollutants can be captured by H2O2 and O2 through the twofold cation-π interaction during Fenton-like reaction, which inhibits the oxidative decomposition of H2O2 and promotes its hydroxylation. As a result, HM-MS/CN shows excellent performance for water purification by initiating pollutants as electron donors substituting H2O2 consumption under mild natural conditions, and the actual consumption of H2O2 in this system is only 6–8% of that in the common Fenton systems. This discovery is of great significance for the development of novel water purification technology with high efficiency and low consumption.