Professor Wang Huaping’s team in DHU College of Materials Science and Engineering recently published “Efficient Photocatalytic Degradation of the Persistent PET Fiber-Based Microplastics over Pt Nanoparticles Decorated N-Doped TiO2 Nanoflowers” in Advanced Fiber Materials. The first author of this article is Zhou Dawang, a master’s student from the College of Materials Science and Engineering, Donghua University and Associate Researcher Wu Jing, Researcher Yang Jianping, and Researcher Wang Huaping are the article advisors. The collaborators include doctoral students Luo Hongxia and Zhang Fangzhou.
Fiber-based microplastics (FMPs) are plastic particles with a size of less than 5 mm and a high aspect ratio. FMPs have become an emerging pollutant widely distributed in textile wastewater and domestic sewage, which will be very harmful to the life activities of various organisms in the ecosystem. With a large specific surface area, FMPs cause persistent pollution to the natural environment and further expand the scope of pollution as carriers of heavy metal salts. FMPS are difficult to be recovered or removed by traditional wastewater purification technologies. Therefore, in the face of the increasing threat of FMPs pollution, it is urgent to propose pollution reduction strategies and develop degradation technologies.
Based on the photocatalytic degradation strategy, this work introduced the hydrothermal pretreatment method for the first time, obtained excellent photocatalytic degradation of PET fiber microplastics and confirmed that the surface morphology, weight-average molecular weight and crystallinity are the key factors affecting the degradation effect of PET-FMPs, providing a new idea for the degradation strategy of PET-FMPs and other microplastics.
Preparation flow chart of Pt@N-TiO2
