Facile synthesis of porous boron nitride-supported α-Fe2O3 nanoparticles for enhanced regeneration performance

Porous boron nitride (PBN) as an emerging porous material exhibits unique physico-chemical properties for environmental remediation. However, the practical applications of PBN are very difficult due to its poor regeneration performance. In this work, we loaded α-Fe2O3 nanoparticles on PBN to form a kind of composite (HB) with high adsorption capacity, which possessed remarkably enhanced regeneration performance. As expected, HB exhibited excellent synergistic catalytic degradation activity with the assistance of H2O2 towards methylene blue (MB) adsorbed on its surface: after 10 cycles, the removal efficiency of 92.8% for HB remained. Further experiments revealed that the α-Fe2O3 nanoparticles accelerated the decomposition of H2O2 to produce ·O2 radicals and ·OH radicals, which could degrade the dye adsorbed on their surface directly. Given the high adsorption capacity and excellent recyclability, HB is envisaged to be valuable practically for water purification and meets the requirement of large-scale production.