Highly efficient electrocatalytic degradation of pharmaceutical micropollutants via direct electron transfer on a novel TiC/TiO2 electrocatalytic ceramic membrane

TiC/TiO 2 ECM has good conductivity, water permeability and compressive strength. • TiC/TiO 2 ECM enables efficient electrocatalytic degradation of carbamazepine (CBZ). • Direct electron transfer plays a dominant role in degrading CBZ on TiC/TiO 2 ECM. • TiC/TiO 2 ECM has a promising application in actual water matrices. Electrocatalytic ceramic membranes (ECMs) hold great potential for advanced treatment of emerging organic micropollutants in water, however, their application is greatly limited by the tedious and complicated fabrication procedures. This study reported a novel titanium carbide (TiC)/TiO 2 ECM fabricated via a facile compression molding and sintering approach. Characterization results revealed that the TiC/TiO 2 ECM had a dominant pore size distribution of 200–300 nm, water permeability of >200 L m −2  h −1  bar −1 , with good conductivity and compressive strength. Notably, the TiC/TiO 2 ECM enabled highly efficient electrocatalytic filtration removal of representative pharmaceutical micropollutant (e.g., carbamazepine (CBZ)) under a low applied voltage of 5 V with small electrolyte concentration of 8–10 mM Na 2 SO 4 /NaCl. Radical quenching and probe testing results indicated that direct electron transfer (DET) played a predominant role in degrading CBZ, and the electrogeneration of chlorine radical (Cl • ) in NaCl electrolyte contributed to additional CBZ degradation. The TiC/TiO 2 ECM resulted in efficient electrocatalytic degradation of pharmaceuticals with electron-rich moieties (for instance, CBZ, crotamiton, trimethoprim with almost 100% removal), but with limited degradation efficiencies toward ibuprofen (75%) and diethyltoluamide (30%) because of their less electron-donating capacity. The dominant DET pathway endowed the TiC/TiO 2 ECM a good performance for CBZ degradation in actual water matrices, making it an ideal candidate for application. Download: Download high-res image (126KB) Download: Download full-size image