Photoelectrocatalytic water splitting by using various TiO₂ nanostructures is a promising approach to generate hydrogen without harmful byproducts. However, their effective performance is restricted by some drawbacks such as high rapid electron-hole pair recombination and backward reaction producing H₂O. Thus in this study, the probability of enhancing hydrogen generation rate by adding methanol as a sacrificial agent to the anodic chamber of a two-compartment photoelectrochemical cell is investigated. Herein, one-dimensional elongated TiO₂ nanorods that were fabricated via a facile one-pot hydrothermal method are utilized as potent photoanode. Voltammetric characterizations confirm that addition of alcoholic sacrificial agent has a significant effect on photoelectrochemical properties of TiO₂ nanorods which by adding 10 wt% of methanol, the photocurrent density and photoconversion efficiency increased from 0.8mA.cm^-2 to 1.5mA.cm^-2 and from 0.28% to 0.45%, respectively. The results of photoelectrocatalytic water splitting indicated that the hydrogen generation rate in the presence of methanol was about 1.2 times higher than that from pure water splitting. These enhancements can be attributed to the key role of methanol. Methanol molecules not only inhibit the electron-hole pair recombination but also accelerate the hydrogen generation rate by sharing their hydrogen atoms.

Nowadays, it is highly desired to develop highly active and humidity resistive ozone decomposition catalyst to eliminate the ozone contaminant, one of the primary pollutants in air. In this work, a series of Cu2S hollow structured materials are rapidly synthesized using different structured Cu2O templates. The Cu2S from porous Cu2O shows the highest ozone catalytic decomposition efficiency of >95% to 400 ppm ozone with a weight hourly space velocity of 480,000 cm3g-1h-1 in dry air. Importantly, the conversion still keeps >85% in a high relative humidity of 90%. The mechanism is explored by diffusive reflectance infrared spectroscopy which shows the decomposition intermediate of O22-, and the X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy reveals the dual active site of both Cu and S. All these results show the effective decomposition of ozone by Cu2S especially in harsh environments, promising for active ozone elimination.

Cathodic protection is widely used to protect metal structures from corrosion and is commonly applied on marine structures in seaports using sacrificial galvanic anodes. These anodes, either in Zinc, or preferen-tially nowadays in Al-Zn-In alloys, are expected to corrode instead of the metal to be protected. This leads to the release of specific dissolved species, Zn2+, Al3+, In3+ and solid phases like Al(OH)3. Few studies were conducted on the effects of anodes on marine organisms and concluded that further detailed investiga-tions are needed in controlled environments. We therefore propose an experimental approach to evaluate the effects of Zn and Al-Zn-In anodes on oysters stabulated in tanks, under conditions approaching those used in the ports. We chose a non-targeted metabolomic approach, using UHPLC coupled to HRMS, to study the effects on the entire metabolome, without any a priori. A modelling study of the chemical species, corresponding to the deg-radation products of the anodes, likely to be present near the exposed oysters, was also included. We identified 16 and 2 metabolites modulated by Zn- and Al-Zn-In-anodes respectively, involved in bi-ological functions, such as energy metabolism, osmoregulation, oxidative stress, lipid, nucleotide nucle-oside and amino acid metabolisms, defense and signaling pathways.