Activation of peroxydisulfate via photothermal synergistic strategy for wastewater treatment: Efficiency and mechanism

Peroxydisulfate (PDS)-based advanced oxidation processes (AOPs) have been demonstrated to be an effective technology for the removal of refractory organic contaminants from the aquatic environment. Herein, a photothermal synergistic strategy is developed to realize the green activation of PDS under solar light irradiation. An innovative solar photothermal reaction system and its corresponding evaluation method are established. The results show that there is a synergistic effect between light and light-generated thermal effects on the activation of PDS for effectively removing fulvic acid (FA). The maximum degradation percentage of FA increases from 42.6% to 90.8% after introducing ZrC nanoparticles as photothermal materials. The maximum temperature of the whole system is up to 66.4 ℃ after 120 min irradiation at 0.007 wt% solid content of ZrC, which is higher by 26.9% compared with that in the absence of ZrC nanoparticles. Furthermore, the underlying mechanism and PDS activation efficiency are deeply investigated. This work provides a viable strategy for directly using solar radiation to activate PDS for degrading refractory organic compounds, which creates a new avenue toward the utilization of solar energy for wastewater treatment.