Iron-based metal glass is expected to become a pollution control artifact to handle 1 ton of sewage costs about 15 US dollars

It looks like a piece of ordinary household tin foil, but it can effectively remove organic matter and heavy metals from sewage. Recently, Professor Zhang Laichang from the University of Eddie Cowan, Australia, discovered an iron-based metallic glass that offers unlimited possibilities for treating the dye industry and the sewage produced by the mining industry. His research results are published in the latest issue of the international journal Advanced Materials.

Amorphous materials (metal glass) are a class of solid materials based on metal elements. Amorphous materials are usually obtained by rapidly cooling the molten alloy, retaining the structure of the liquid metal to the greatest extent, giving it many superior properties. However, not all materials can result in a completely amorphous structure from a rapidly cooled molten alloy. How to effectively use partially crystallized amorphous materials has become a new topic.

Zhang Laichang team research found that under the combined action of hydrogen peroxide and fully crystalline iron-based materials, the methylene blue dye can be rapidly degraded. They used a high-temperature heat treatment method to rearrange the original disordered structure in the metallic glass to obtain a crystalline material containing a heterogeneous intermetallic compound. During the heat treatment, as the temperature increases, the formed grains will continue to increase, which provides a convenient passage for the rapid transfer of electrons inside the grains. Moreover, since the multiphase intermetallic compound has a significant potential difference, it is easy to form numerous tiny primary cells inside the material, so that electrons spontaneously shift during the reaction. In sewage treatment , rapid electron transfer can effectively convert pollutants into water, carbon dioxide, inorganic small molecules and other harmless substances. In other words, the faster the electron transfer, the higher the decontamination efficiency.

The experimental results show that this iron-based metal material is faster than the existing techniques for removing heavy metals and organic substances such as dyes. According to statistics, the cost of using this new material to treat 1 ton of sewage is only about $15. More importantly, the form of the block strip is more conducive to practical application, and the number of cycles can be more than 5 times, which has considerable economic benefits.