Construction of Confined Bifunctional 2D Material for Efficient Sulfur Resource Recovery and Hg2+ Adsorption in Desulfurization

Substantial energy penalty of valuable sulfate recovery restricts the efficiency of wet desulfurization and increases the risk of Hg0 reemission. Although the enhanced sulfite oxidation rate with cobalt-based materials can increase the energy efficiency, inactivation and poisoning of catalyst due to the competition of reactant must be addressed. Here we obtained a superwetting two-dimensional cobalt-nitrogen-doped carbon (2D Co-N-C) nanosheet featuring confined catalysis/adsorption sites for the energy-efficient sulfite oxidation and Hg2+ adsorption. The designed structure exhibits enhanced surface polarity, availability and short reactant diffusion path, thus enabling the significant catalytic TOF value of 0.085 s-1 and simultaneous mercury removal ability of 143.26 mg·g-1. The catalyst nanosheets present regenerating stabilities to improve cost-efficiency. By deployment of the Co-N-C catalysts, a marked reduction of heat penalty up to 69% can be achieved, which makes this catalytic pathway for sulfur resource recovery economically feasible in real industry scenario.