Jie Liu, Hangyuan Du, Huiyue Wang, Hongrun Zhu, Xueying Wen, Xingpei Yu, Junhao Ai, Ran Niu*, Nan Yao*, Jiang Gong*

Green synthesis of photo-Fenton-active MIL-88B from waste polyester for co-enhancing solar interfacial evaporation with organic contaminant remediation

Chemical Engineering Journal (2025) Accept. (IF2025 = 13.2)

The collaboration of solar-powered interfacial vaporization and advanced oxidation processes has aroused great attention in freshwater production and wastewater remediation. However, the rational design of cost-effective, high-performance bi-functional solar evaporators is still challenging. In this work, we report the upgrading-utilization of poly(ethylene terephthalate) waste into shuttle-like metal-organic framework (namely Fe-BDC) through a solvent-free ball milling method, followed by the construction of Fe-BDC/graphene (Fe-BDC/G) evaporator for freshwater production and catalytic oxidation of tetracycline (TC). The Fe-BDC/G evaporator not only achieves high sunlight absorbance, but also exhibits outstanding photo-thermo-catalytic property towards TC oxidation. Benefiting from these advantages, the Fe-BDC/G evaporator manifests outstanding vaporization rate (3.15 kg m^-2 h^-1), effective TC removal rate (99.8%), and good recycling stability, which thereby outperforms the-state-of-art evaporators. COMSOL Multiphysics and density functional theory calculation results unravel that the abundant Fe3+ sites of Fe-BDC and the significant thermal localization effect together promote the activation of H₂O₂ to generate hydroxyl radical for TC oxidation. In outdoors, the total water output of the Fe-BDC/G evaporator within 12 h is 5.0 kg m^-2, which can satisfy the water requirement of two grown-ups per day; meanwhile, the TC removal rate within 1 h is 95.0%. This work contributes to the upcycling of waste PET into functional metal-organic frameworks and establishes a new platform to fabricate advanced hybrid evaporators for simultaneous freshwater production and wastewater treatment.