Photocatalytic activation of peroxymonosulfate by Ti-oxo clusters grafted carbon nitride: Enhanced charge transfer and bisphenol A degradation efficiency

•TiOCs effectively adjusted the electronic structure of CN.•TiOCs-CN acted as both PMS activator and photocatalyst.•BPA can be effectively degraded under various environments.•BPA removal is dominated via both radical and non-radical pathway. Photocatalytic peroxymonosulfate (PMS) activation process is promising for the organic wastewater treatment. A simple amide bonding strategy has been developed to synthesized Ti-oxo clusters (TiOCs)-g-C3N4 (TiOCs-CN) catalyst. The prepared TiOCs-CN was used to remove bisphenol A (BPA) under simulated sunlight-driven PMS. The experimental and computational results demonstrate that the incorporation of TiOCs can efficiently regulate the electronic structure of CN. Thus, an excellent performance with a BPA removal rate of 100 % and a totalorganic carbon(TOC) removal rate of 87.2 % within 40 min was achieved in the AM 1.5/PMS-TiOCs-CN system.Among, the reaction rate constant of AM 1.5/PMS-TiOCs-CN (97.24 × 10−3 min−1) is higher than that of AM 1.5/PMS-CN (25.10 × 10−3 min−1) by nearly 4 times. The synergistic effect of photocatalytic PMS activation greatly facilitated the generation of reactive radicals and obviously increased the removal rate of BPA. This work can offer inspiration for rational design of high efficiency photocatalysts in the PMS oxidation process for organic wastewater remediation.