MXene/polypyrrole coated melamine-foam for efficient interfacial evaporation and photodegradation

Xiaotong Mu; Lihua Chen; Nannan Qu; Jiale Yu; Xiaoqian Jiang; Chaohu Xiao; Xingping Luo; Qimeige Hasi

doi:10.1016/j.jcis.2023.01.018

MXene/polypyrrole coated melamine-foam for efficient interfacial evaporation and photodegradation

J Colloid Interface Sci. 2023 Apr 15:636:291-304. doi: 10.1016/j.jcis.2023.01.018. Epub 2023 Jan 7.

Authors

Xiaotong Mu¹, Lihua Chen², Nannan Qu¹, Jiale Yu¹, Xiaoqian Jiang¹, Chaohu Xiao¹, Xingping Luo¹, Qimeige Hasi³

Affiliations

¹ College of Chemical Engineering, Experimental Teaching Department, Northwest Minzu University, Key Laboratory of Environment-Friendly Composite Materials of the State Ethnic Affairs Commission, Gansu Provincial Biomass Function Composites Engineering Research Center, Northwest Xincun 1, Lanzhou 730030, PR China.
² College of Chemical Engineering, Experimental Teaching Department, Northwest Minzu University, Key Laboratory of Environment-Friendly Composite Materials of the State Ethnic Affairs Commission, Gansu Provincial Biomass Function Composites Engineering Research Center, Northwest Xincun 1, Lanzhou 730030, PR China. Electronic address: clh@xbmu.edu.cn.
³ College of Chemical Engineering, Experimental Teaching Department, Northwest Minzu University, Key Laboratory of Environment-Friendly Composite Materials of the State Ethnic Affairs Commission, Gansu Provincial Biomass Function Composites Engineering Research Center, Northwest Xincun 1, Lanzhou 730030, PR China. Electronic address: ha2qimei@163.com.

PMID: 36638569
DOI: 10.1016/j.jcis.2023.01.018

Abstract

The application of photothermal materials in seawater desalination, wastewater treatment have been widely studied, however, there are relatively few studies that combine photothermal effects and solar-driven photocatalysis and exhibit efficient solar-driven water evaporation performance and excellent photocatalytic ability. Form the perspective of practical application, it is of great significance to combine photothermal effect with solar-driven photocatalysis to develop environment-friendly evaporator with low cost, simple preparation process and ability of seawater desalination, wastewater treatment and photodegradation of organic dyes. In this paper, a novel multifunctional MXene/polypyrrole (PPy) coated melamine foam (MF) named as MF-MXene/PPy was successfully prepared by simple impregnation and in-situ polymerization. The MF-MXene/PPy has rich porosity (89.13 %), abundant water molecule transport channels, excellent light absorption capacity (about 94 %), low thermal conductivity (0.1047 W m^-1 K^-1), and exhibits excellent performance in solar desalination, wastewater purification and photodegradation of organic dyes. Under 1 kW m^-2 illuminate, the solar energy conversion rate and efficiency of MF-MXene/PPy reaches up to 1.5174 kg m^-2h^-1 and 91.24 %. Moreover, due to the regular pore size of MF-MXene/PPy, good salinity tolerance was shown even after continuous evaporation in 20 wt% NaCl for 8 h. After continuous evaporation in 70 mL of 20 wt% NaCl for 8 h, the amount of salt collected could reach 0.2 g. In addition, MF-MXene/PPy also possessed excellent visible light degradation ability for organic dyes, and the degradation rate of methylene blue (MB), rhodamine B (RHB) and methyl orange (MO) were 92.38 %, 88.92 % and 91.75 %, respectively. As a fundamental research, this research will open a novel way to the development of new evaporator.

Keywords: MXene; Photodegradation; Salt tolerance; Solar steam generation; Solar-thermal conversion.