Polymer–assisted preparation of porous wood–based metallic composites for efficient catalytic reduction of organic pollutants

Abstract

The unreasonable emission of nitroaromatic organic pollutants (NOPs) has threatened the ecological environment. However, the existing catalytic materials for NOPs reduction can not meet the actual practical application due to various functional deficiencies. In this work, novel cellulose–based metallic composites with high catalytic activity for NOPs reduction were developed through polymer–assisted electroless deposition (ELD) technique coating metallic nanoparticles onto cellulose–based porous wood surfaces. The fabricated metallic composites display outstanding catalytic ability, catalytic universality and excellent durability for most NOPs, due to the uniform catalytic metal coating enabled by polymer–assisted ELD approach and sufficient catalytic sites provided by the porous wood host surfaces. The continuous flow catalytic systems using the fabricated bulk composites were further demonstrated showing the broad prospects of such designed metallic composites in actual practical applications. This work provides a new avenue to realize rational design and large–scale fabrication of novel high–performance catalysts for NOPs reduction applications.