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Updated: Jan 10, 2026

Heterogeneous Removal of Water-Soluble Ruthenium Olefin Metathesis Catalyst from Aqueous Media Via Host-Guest Interaction
Published on: August 23, 2018
Hierarchical Ru0/Ruδ+/Al2O3 electrocatalyst enabling phenolic contaminant-to-chemical conversion
Renyu Wang1, Gong Zhang1, Lizhe Liu2
1Center for Water and Ecology, State Key Laboratory of Regional Environment and Sustainability, School of Environment, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China.
Abstract:
Valorizing phenol in wastewater to cyclohexanol via electrochemical hydrogenation (ECH) offers a promising strategy for advancing a circular economy that shifts from pollutant control to resource recovery, but remains challenged by the absence of efficient and selective catalysts in complex wastewater matrices. Herein, we report a hierarchical Ru0/Ruδ+/Al2O3 catalyst with coupling multi-level electronic state to improve the phenol ECH performance. The metal-semimetal-insulator hierarchical interface effectively induces the integration of H* evolution and phenol activation, and the unsaturated Ru-O coordination formed by precise anchoring of Ru on Al2O3 lowers the reaction energy barrier, achieving a 4.3-fold increase in the reaction rate over that on the pristine Ru catalyst. Consequently, the ECH process applied to actual phenol-containing wastewater demonstrates a stable cyclohexanol selectivity of approximately 80% for over 120 h, making it more economically feasible and environmentally beneficial than the conventional adsorption-Fenton oxidation treatment. Our work provides valuable guidance for wastewater treatment from environmental burden to sustainable recovery.
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