Honeycomb BiFeO3 catalysts harvest mechanical energy from ultrasonic vibrations for efficient piezoelectric-catalyzed degradation of antibiotics

Abstract

Piezocatalysis has attracted much attention for its efficient performance in removing pharmaceuticals and dyes from wastewater. In this work, the piezoelectric system was applied by environmental-benign BiFeO3 catalysis for the removal of antibiotics in the water. The irregular honeycomb-like BiFeO3 was prepared through a simple co-precipitation route with composite precipitants. The results demonstrated that BiFeO3 exhibited excellent piezoelectric catalytic degradation performance for metronidazole under ultrasonic vibration. The effects of catalyst dosage, initial metronidazole concentration, solution pH, and ultrasonic power on piezoelectric catalytic efficiency were systematically investigated. It was found that the highest piezoelectric catalytic degradation efficiency of metronidazole was 98.87 %. The catalyst stability of the catalyst showed that it had excellent piezoelectric catalytic degradation Finally, the degradation efficiency of metronidazole was only reduced by 4 % through four cycles, which demonstrated the good stability and reusability of BiFeO3.