Solar-driven interfacial water evaporation has become one of the most promising approaches to effectively harvesting freshwater, yet the fabrication of high-performance and multifunctional solar interfacial evaporators (SIEs) still remains a huge challenge to date. In this study, a multifunctional MXene and Fe-MOF@cellulose acetate/polyvinylpyrrolidone (MXM@CP) SIE was prepared via a facile “electrospinning and suction filtration deposition” coupling strategy. Thanks to the incorporation of MXene, MXM@CP displayed excellent photothermal conversion performance. Together with the fast water transport channel provided by the porous cellulose acetate electrospinning substrate, a remarkable solar-driven water evaporation property was achieved for MXM@CP, showing a higher water evaporation rate of 1.1 kg m–2 h–1 under one sun irradiation. Moreover, the resultant composite film also exhibited excellent Fenton catalytic activity to effectively degrade volatile organic compounds (VOCs) due to the synergistic effect of the MXene and Fe-based MOF (Fe-MOF). Particularly, a relatively higher degradation rate of 82.8% was acquired for the resulting evaporator toward the benzene contaminant. These results provide new insights into the construction of high-performance and multifunctional SIEs toward clean freshwater collection from the VOC-contaminated water system.
Ozone catalytic oxidation (OZCO) has gained great interest in environmental remediation while it still faces a big challenge during the deep degradation of refractory volatile organic compounds (VOCs) at room temperature. Hydroxylation of the catalytic surface provides a new strategy for regulating the catalytic activity to boost VOC degradation. Herein, OZCO of toluene at room temperature over hydroxyl-mediated MnOx/Al2O3 catalysts was originally demonstrated. Specifically, a novel hydroxyl-mediated MnOx/Al2O3 catalyst was developed via the in situ AlOOH reconstruction method and used for toluene OZCO. The toluene degradation performance of MnOx/Al2O3 was significantly superior to those of most of the state-of-the-art catalysts, and 100% toluene was removed with an excellent mineralization rate (82.3%) and catalytic stability during OZCO. ESR and in situ DRIFTs results demonstrated that surface hydroxyl groups (HGs) greatly improved the reactive oxygen species generation, thus dramatically accelerating the benzene ring breakage and deep mineralization. Furthermore, HGs provided anchoring sites for uniformly dispersing MnOx and greatly enhanced toluene adsorption and ozone activation. This work paves a way for deep decomposition of aromatic VOCs at room temperature.