ORIGINAL ABSTRACT

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.