Functional perovskite oxide porous membrane developed by Qingdao Energy Institute and energy-saving regeneration technology

[ Instrument Network Instrument R & D ] Perovskite oxide has unique optoelectronic and catalytic activity, and has broad application prospects in high-temperature catalysis, gas separation, and photocatalysis. The membrane separation and catalysis research group of Qingdao Institute of Bioenergy and Process of the Chinese Academy of Sciences has carried out a lot of work in the development of new perovskite oxides and its catalytic-membrane separation performance. Recently, Wang Yuchao, an associate researcher of the research group, uses a perovskite oxide La0.7Sr0.3CoO3 (LSCO) porous membrane, which can not only promote efficient sunlight to drive water evaporation, but also catalyze the degradation of biological pollutants, and achieve energy-saving regeneration of porous membrane .

There are often biological pollutants such as algae in natural waters, as well as a wide variety of organic pollutants. During the solar-driven evaporation process, pollutants will be enriched and grown in the photothermal film, which will cause film pollution and cause the performance of the film material to decrease. High-temperature degradation can effectively remove biological and organic pollutants, and is an ideal means to achieve membrane regeneration. However, the thermal decomposition process of pollutants requires higher temperatures, resulting in huge energy consumption. And reducing the combustion decomposition temperature of pollutants can effectively reduce energy consumption, realize energy-saving regeneration of membrane materials, and promote the application of photothermal materials in actual water environments.

The research group leader and researcher Jiang Heqing proposed to use the catalytic and photothermal properties of cobalt-based perovskite to develop a multifunctional perovskite oxide porous membrane. In tests using algae and melamine as pollutants, the LSCO porous membrane significantly reduced the combustion decomposition temperature of the pollutants attached to it, reduced the energy consumption of the porous membrane during the combustion process, and achieved the goal of energy saving and regeneration. Due to the high thermal stability of the perovskite oxide porous membrane, performance can be almost completely restored after multiple membrane regeneration cycles. This work cleverly utilizes the photothermal and catalytic properties of perovskite oxides to solve the biological pollution problem of photothermal films in practical applications.

This research work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China and the Natural Science Foundation of Shandong Province. Related research results have been published in the journal Nano Energy (Nano Energy, 2020, 70, 104538).