Harnessing Oil-Water Microinterfaces for the Catalyst-Free Oxidative Degradation of Toxic Organic Pollutants

Toxic organic pollutants are environmentally harmful and pose serious risks to ecosystems and public health. Their removal from industrial wastewater often relies on energy-intensive or expensive catalytic processes, making treatment both challenging and costly. The current work demonstrates the oxidation and degradation of toxic organic pollutants at oil-water interfaces (OWIs) by generating microdroplets of oil in water. Oil microdroplets (∼3 μm) are generated by passing the oil phase into water through a porous membrane. This method is simple, is catalyst-free, and operates under ambient conditions, without requiring an external electric field or radiation. The intrinsic electric field at the oil-water interface is proposed as a key factor driving the transformation of organic pollutants. A wide range of compounds, including benzene, phenol, glyphosate, 2,4-D, and naphthalene, are efficiently oxidized/degraded, demonstrating the universality of the approach. High-resolution mass spectrometry is employed to identify and quantify reaction products and to elucidate the oxidation/degradation pathways. Overall, this work highlights oil-water interfacial chemistry as a promising strategy for pollutant remediation.