Introduction of oxygen vacancy to Bi2Mn4O10 supported by nickel foam for 1O2 dominated metronidazole degradation under dielectric barrier discharge plasma

Antibiotics in surface water adversely affect food safety and aquatic ecosystem, which hinder biological water treatment, and advanced oxidation technology (AOPs) is of great significance. This study achieved nitroimidazole antibiotic metronidazole (MNZ) removal in a dielectric barrier discharge plasma (DBDP) process. A ternary Bi2Mn4O10/NiF (BMON) was synthesized via microwave-assistant to enhance the DBDP process. Compared with Bi2Mn4O10, BMON has a more stable structure with lower ion dissolution but higher oxygen vacancy (Vö) content. The DBDP process generates active species, and O2⋅− acts as an intermediate in forming 1O2⋅− to degrade MNZ through multipath. The cycle of lattice oxygen (OL)/O2 and Mn+/M(n−1)+ maintain the charge balance on the BMON surface, during which the transformation of Vö and 1O2 improve the catalytic efficiency. Furthermore, MNZ possible degradation pathways were proposed by DFT calculations and ESI-QTOF-MS detection. The DBDP/BMON process exhibited great potential for heterogeneous catalytic in nitroimidazole antibiotic degradation.