2D confinement freestanding graphene oxide composite membranes with enriched oxygen vacancies for enhanced organic contaminants removal via peroxymonosulfate activation

Abstract Introducing membrane filtration into advanced oxidation processes to decrease energy and cost consumption has been considered as a promising direction in environmental remediation. In this work, we firstly developed a kind of novel lawn-like Fe2O3@Co0.08Fe1.92@nitrogen-doped reduced graphene oxide@carbon nanotube composites (FeCo@GCTs) through in-situ pyrolysis of self-assembly of Prussian blue analogues and GO, followed through a vacuum-assisted filtration strategy to fabricate 2D confinement freestanding GO composite membrane. Electrochemical analysis and H2-TPR revealed the superiority of FeCo@GCTs as ideal electron acceptor, and this unique lawn-like structure concentrated active sites with a confined space and enriched oxygen vacancies that realized 98.5% (0.128 min−1) sulfamethoxazole degradation via peroxymonosulfate activation, and accelerated the reduction of Cr(VI). Owing to the increasing interlayer spacing of GO nanosheets, the permeation flux of FeCo@GCTs/GO membrane has not only been attained to 487.3 L·m−2·h−1·bar−1, which was more than 7.5-fold of GO membrane (64.6 L·m−2·h−1·bar−1), but also achieved the synergistic membrane filtration and catalytic degradation of pollutants. Furthermore, scavenger experiments and EPR tests were conducted to confirm the active radicals, of which SO4·– and 1O2 were responsible for SMX degradation. Therefore, these features demonstrated great potential for the fabricated 2D confinement catalytic membrane with enriched oxygen vacancies in wastewater purification.