In situ growth gold nanoparticles in three-dimensional sugarcane membrane for flow catalytical and antibacterial application

Highlights: • Sugarcane decorated with gold nanoparticles (Au NPs/sugarcane) was fabricated. • Au NPs/sugarcane membrane was a superior catalyst for methylene blue reduction. • Au NPs/sugarcane membrane exhibited an excellent antibacterial performance. • Dynamic of water flowing through membrane was mathematically simulated. In this work, we decorated gold nanoparticles (Au NPs) in the porous, three-dimensional sugarcane membrane for the flow catalytical and antibacterial application. Due to the uniformly distributed Au NPs in sugarcane channels and the porous structure of sugarcane, the interaction between contaminant and catalysis was enhanced as water flowing through the Au NPs/sugarcane membrane. The Au NPs/sugarcane membrane exhibited superior catalytical efficiency for removing methylene blue (MB) with a turn over frequency of 0.27 mol_MB·mol_Au⁻¹·min⁻¹ and the water treatment rate reached up to 1.15×10⁵ L/m² h with >98.3 % MB removal efficiency. The Au NPs/sugarcane membrane also exhibited superior bacterial removal efficiency as E. coli suspension flowing through it, due to the superimposition effects of physical barrier in sugarcane and the antibacterial property of Au NPs. The tremendous catalytical and antibacterial performance of Au NPs/sugarcane membrane provides a promising potential for the rational design of flow catalytical membrane reactor to purify the microbial contaminated water.