A novel MOF-derived Fe/Ce@NPC-600 floating cathode with massive FeII using in photoelectro-Fenton system for efficient degradation of aqueous tetracycline: Fabrication, performance prediction based on machine learning and mechanism

A MOF-derived carbon/metal oxide composite (Fe/Ce@NPC-600) by doping Ce into NH2-MOF-101(Fe) precursor and simple one-step carbonization was fabricated. Fe/Ce@NPC-600 as a floating cathode was innovatively applied to the solar photoelectro-Fenton (SPEF) process to increase the yield of H2O2 and activate it for degradation tetracycline (TC). The characterizations showed that the presence of Ce greatly increased the content of Fe2+ and photoresponse ability in the material. Thanks to the synergistic effect of Fe and Ce, Fe/Ce@NPC600 cathode could efficiently degrade TC by 98.2% within 30 min, and the removal rate of total organic carbon (TOC) was 68.2%, and the photoelectric synergistic enhancement factor (fPEF) was 1.4. Besides, based on machine learning, a extreme gradient boosting model was established to predict electrode performance. The degradation mechanism and pathway of TC were also proposed. Our results inspired the application of floating cathodes, MOF-derived materials and artificial intelligence for advanced oxidation processes for efficient removal of emerging contaminants.