Baijiu, a traditional Chinese spirit integral to the cultural heritage, has Moutai and Wuliangye as its most prominent global exemplars. Distiller's grains, a typical byproduct of the Chinese Baijiu industry, have gained increasing prominence as a renewable biomass resource. However, the common practices of discarding distiller's grains or utilizing them in low-value applications result in significant resource waste and serious environmental pollution. The preparation of functional materials and composite functional materials from distiller's grains for high-value utilizations is currently in the early exploration stage. This review critically summarizes recent advances in functional and composite functional materials derived from distiller's grains for applications in sodium-ion batteries, electrochemical supercapacitors, environmental adsorbents, heterogeneous catalysts, and other emerging energy and sustainability-related fields. This work outlines high-value development directions for distiller's grains-derived functional materials, focusing on their practical industrial applications. Finally, four key challenges, including component heterogeneity, process specificity, application prospects, and large-scale application, were proposed for the future development of functional materials and composite functional materials from distillers' grains. The detailed future development direction is pointed out for addressing these challenges, aiming to promote the upgrading of the Chinese Baijiu industry and the vigorous development of the China's economy of new quality productive forces.

Converting CO₂ into high-value fuels through the synergistic interplay of donor-acceptor (DA) structure and photothermal effects presents a promising strategy for enhancing the carbon cycle and mitigating greenhouse gas emissions. In this work, a carbon nitride (g-C₃N₄) based photocatalyst, designated Au/BMNS-x, was engineered to integrate both a DA structure and Localized Surface Plasmon Resonance (LSPR) by simultaneously incorporating boron doping and Au nanoparticles (NPs) into g-C₃N₄. The plasmonic Au NPs generate a pronounced photothermal effect under irradiation, significantly elevating the local reaction temperature during CO₂ photoreduction. Real-time infrared thermography demonstrated that Au/BMNS-2 reached a stabilized surface temperature of 148.1℃, which is 1.17 times higher than that of BMNS and 2.06 times greater than pristine g-C₃N₄. Under optimized conditions, Au/BMNS-2 exhibited a CO production rate 5.99 times higher than that of pristine g-C₃N₄, along with excellent structural stability and reusability over multiple cycles. In situ X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and femtosecond transient absorption spectroscopy (fs-TAS) provide direct evidence of hot electron back-injection from plasmonic Au NPs into BMNS, enriching electron density around the catalytic active sites. Crucially, the DA structure, synergistically coupled with the LSPR effect, enables highly efficient separation and ultrafast transfer of photogenerated charge carriers, thereby significantly enhancing overall photocatalytic performance. The reaction mechanism was further elucidated through in situ Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR) spectroscopy and density functional theory (DFT) simulation. This study offers a rational design strategy for multifunctional photocatalysts that harness both plasmonic and photothermal effects, opening new avenues for high-efficiency solar-driven CO₂ conversion technologies.