Engineering of catalytic Ce@SiC ceramic membranes with ozonation for efficient antibiotic degradation

Catalytic ceramic membranes with ozonation have been considered promising for efficient organic pollutants degradation in water. Herein, cerium oxide-doped silicon carbide (Ce@SiC) ceramic membranes were developed via in-situ embedding CeO 2 nanoparticles into the porous SiC membrane that can be coupled with catalytic ozonation for efficient ciprofloxacin (CIP) degradation. Notably, the optimized Ce@SiC membrane with ozonation could achieve 94.3 % CIP degradation efficiency within 60 min, outperforming ozonation (63.4 %) or pristine SiC (66.1 %) alone. Meanwhile, the membrane showed excellent total organic carbon mineralization of 66.4 % for the CIP, which was significantly higher than that of using ozonation (19.8 %) or pristine SiC (30.1 %) alone, demonstrating enhanced oxidation efficiency. The high performance is attributed to the abundant oxygen vacancies on the Ce@SiC membrane surface, which facilitate ozone decomposition into hydroxyl ( OH) and superoxide ( O 2 − ) radicals, and the synergistic effect of the Ce 3+ /Ce 4+ redox cycle. The membrane not only exhibited robust catalytic stability in cycling experiments, but also excellent resistance to ion interference. Furthermore, the high catalytic performance was mainly attributed to the rich oxygen vacancies on the Ce@SiC membrane surface, which facilitates ozone decomposition into OH and O 2 − . This work offers a sustainable strategy of coupling catalytic ozonation with ceramic membrane for refractory antibiotics degradation.