Magnet-actuated microfluidic reactors with controllable Fe-based amorphous microspheres for tetracycline degradation

作者：Luo, Fangzhou; Lei, Lei; Cheng, Zhiliang; Wan, Liang; Zhao, Chao; Niu, Kunpeng; Li, Chang; Chen, Qihao; Liu, Lijun; Wang, Ning^*

来源：Journal of Flow Chemistry, 2022, 12(3): 297-305.

DOI：10.1007/s41981-022-00227-z

• Microfluidic reactor
• Fe-based amorphous microspheres
• Magnetic field
• Tetracycline degradation

Micro/nano-sized magnetic particles are widely used in various reactors for antibiotic pollution removal. However, in conventional reactors, the magnetic particles are either fixed, which may cause low mass transfer and slow diffusion, or stirred disorderly, which is difficult to be accurately regulated for further optimizing the reactor design. In this work, a magnet-actuated microfluidic reactor filled with the precision manipulated Fe-based amorphous microspheres was developed to decompose the tetracycline, which was composed of two pieces of 3D printed transparent resin modes with microchannels. And the microspheres with soft magnetism were evenly put into the reaction chamber and driven by the external magnetic field, which controls them to bounce up and down for further improving the efficiency of the Fenton-like reactions occurred in the microreactor. In the experiment, the degradation performance of the microreactor was explored by adjusting the electromagnetic signals and flow rates of the reagents. The degradation efficiency could achieve 80.39% within 1.5 min when the magnetic field was generated by a sinusoidal voltage of 6 V and a frequency of 5 Hz at the flow rate of 100 mu L/min. The degradation was largely enhanced and the proposed microreactors showed good reusability and stability, and may be scaled up for treating various kinds of sewage.

• 单位
  武汉理工大学