Multifunctional ferrocene-based photo-Fenton membrane: An efficient integration of rejection and catalytic process

A novel ferrocene-based nanofiltration membrane is prepared to combine filtration and photo-Fenton reaction for water treatment. Membranes containing ferrocene groups are successfully fabricated via an integration of layer-by-layer interfacial polymerization and ion exchange reaction. Rejection performance towards bisphenol S (BPS) increases with the growth of the interfacial polymerization layer, and the optimal membrane shows the highest rejection rate of 98.1%. For the optimal photo-Fenton system with H 2 O 2 , UV and ferrocene-based membrane (PS/HTCC-3/FcSO 3 ), the degradation rate of k is 0.092 min −1 , which is 1.8 times higher than that of the system with only H 2 O 2 and UV. Meanwhile, the salinity of BPS in the optimal system is 2 times higher than that of the system with H 2 O 2 and UV. After the heterogeneous photo-Fenton process, PS/HTCC-3/FcSO 3 can reject 65.6% of the BPS degradation by-products based on the variation of total organic carbon (TOC). In addition, quenching experiments prove that ·OH is the primary active radical, and the yield of ·OH in the optimal system is the highest compared with the system with H 2 O 2 and UV. The outstanding performance of ferrocene-based membrane demonstrates its potential for micropollutants treatment.