Environmental pollution and resource shortage are two major challenges facing the world today, and resourcization of precious metals is one of the effective strategies to confront these problems. Precious metals, known for their high performance and scarcity, are indispensable our current lives. As nonrenewable resources, the demand and consumption of precious metals are increasing every year. Therefore, it is necessary to develop green and efficient precious metal recovery technologies to alleviate the environmental and resource crisis. This perspective summarizes various typical precious metal recovery strategies and pays attention to innovations from traditional technologies. We also evaluate and prospect the above methods based on secondary pollution and recovery efficiency.

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The health and environmental problems caused by volatile organic compounds (VOCs) have attracted wide attention. Photocatalytic technology provides a green and sustainable way for VOCs removal. How to build a highly efficient and stable photocatalyst is of great significance to promote the practical application of photocatalysis technology. In this review, the literatures on photocatalytic oxidation in VOCs are surveyed and systematically categorized based on the types of photocatalytic materials. The methods of improving photocatalytic activity are studied, and the deactivation process of photocatalyst is discussed. Finally, the reaction mechanism is summarized according to the charge separation process and the classification of reactive oxygen species.

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Based on the electro-oxidation mode, electrochemical sensors provide an appealing evaluation tool for uric acid (UA) detection. However, improvements in the field of high-performance electrocatalysts remain necessary to enable wide-range...

Introducing microwave fields into photocatalytic technology is a promising strategy to suppress the recombination of photogenerated charge carriers. Here, a series of microwave-absorbing photocatalysts, xCNTs/TiO2, were prepared by combining titanium dioxide (TiO2) with carbon nanotubes (CNTs) using a typical alcoholic thermal method to study the promotion of microwave-generated thermal and athermal effects on the photocatalytic oxidation process. As good carriers that are capable of absorbing microwaves and conducting electrons, CNTs can form hot spots and defects under the action of the thermal effect from microwaves to capture electrons generated on the surface of TiO2 and enhance the separation efficiency of photogenerated electrons (e−) and holes (h+). Excluding the influence of the reaction temperature, the athermal effect of the microwave field had a polarizing effect on the catalyst, which improved the light absorption rate of the catalyst. Moreover, microwave radiation also promoted the activation of oxygen molecules and hydroxyl groups on the catalyst surface to generate more reactive oxygen radicals. According to the mechanism analysis, the microwave effect significantly improved the photocatalytic advanced oxidation process, which lays a solid theoretical foundation for practical application.

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