Harvesting Friction Energy for Tribo‐catalytic Degradation of Organic Pollutions via Natural Tourmaline

Abstract Friction, a very common phenomenon in daily life, can be easily converted into electric energy via triboelectricity and can further drive oxidation and reduction reactions to degrade dye wastewater, which is named tribo‐catalysis. In this work, the friction energy between the stirring rod and the natural tourmaline powder was applied to realize the efficient tribo‐catalytic dye degradation. As the catalyst mass increases from 0 g to 0.15 g, the degradation ratio quickly increases at first and then slightly decreases during the tribo‐catalytic process. 0.10 g tourmaline powder shows excellent dye degradation ratio, which is up to ∼96 % at 400 r.p.m. stirring for 5 h. In addition, the dye degradation ratio can be improved through adjusting pH value of the dye solution to 7 or increasing the contact area between the natural tourmaline powder and the stirring rod. The electron spin‐resonance spectra experiment confirms that the primary active substances are hydroxyl radicals (⋅OH) and superoxide radicals (⋅O 2 − ). The natural tourmaline with excellent tribo‐catalytic performance is prospective to treat the organic pollutions through harvesting the friction energy in the environment.