Andy Baker

Postgraduate researcher Ze Li joined my lab group last year, and I have been enjoying collaborating with him as he explored new methods to chemically degrade the pollutant naphthalene. 

Ze has led this paper where he explores a novel approach for degrading naphthalene, a persistent water pollutant, using a partially oxidised cobalt-based metal-organic framework (MOF) to activate peroxymonosulfate. The resulting Co-MOF-500 demonstrates efficient naphthalene removal across a range of conditions, exhibiting good stability and reusability. 

Mechanistic investigations, combining experimental analysis and computational modelling, reveal that both radical and non-radical reactive oxygen species are involved, with singlet oxygen playing a significant role, attributed to the unique properties of the partially oxidised MOF structure. The research highlights the benefits of this strategy in terms of catalytic performance and provides insights into the activation mechanism, suggesting a promising avenue for advanced pollutant removal.

If “Partially Oxidized Cobalt-Based Metal-organic Frameworks for Peroxymonosulfate Activation: A Novel Strategy for Naphthalene Degradation with Mechanistic and DFT Insights“, led by Ze Li, is of interest, we have a personalized Share Link:
https://authors.elsevier.com/c/1kvn-3PkfmSP9R

And for fun, I have asked Google’s NotebookLM to make an AI generated podcast on the paper. You can listen to that here:

https://notebooklm.google.com/notebook/9e9982cd-f6ac-4fe9-a6af-78a5c3e3b9fb/audio