Tandem microplastic degradation and hydrogen production by hierarchical carbon nitride-supported single-atom iron catalysts
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Date
2024
Authors
Lin, J.
Hu, K.
Wang, Y.
Tian, W.
Hall, T.
Duan, X.
Sun, H.
Zhang, H.
Cortés, E.
Wang, S.
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Journal article
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Nature Communications, 2024; 15(1):8769-1-8769-13
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Jingkai Lin, Kunsheng Hu, Yantao Wang, Wenjie Tian, Tony Hall, Xiaoguang Duan, Hongqi Sun, Huayang Zhang, Emiliano Cortés & Shaobin Wang
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Abstract
Microplastic pollution, an emerging environmental issue, poses significant threats to aquatic ecosystems and human health. In tackling microplastic pollution and advancing green hydrogen production, this study reveals a tandem catalytic microplastic degradation-hydrogen evolution reaction (MPD-HER) process using hierarchical porous carbon nitride-supported single-atom iron catalysts (FeSA-hCN). Through hydrothermal-assisted Fenton-like reactions, we accomplish near-total ultrahigh-molecular-weight-polyethylene degradation into C(3)-C(20) organics with 64% selectivity of carboxylic acid under neutral pH, a leap beyond current capabilities in efficiency, selectivity, eco-friendliness, and stability over six cycles. The system demonstrates versatility by degrading various daily-use plastics across different aquatic settings. The mixture of FeSA-hCN and plastic degradation products further achieves a hydrogen evolution of 42 μmol h(‒1) under illumination, outperforming most existing plastic photoreforming methods. This tandem MPD-HER process not only provides a scalable and economically feasible strategy to combat plastic pollution but also contributes to the hydrogen economy, with far-reaching implications for global sustainability initiatives.
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© The Author(s) 2024. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.