A new FeOCl/graphene quantum dot catalyst for peroxymonosulfate activation to efficiently remove organic pollutants and inactivate Escherichia coli. (25th February 2022)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Sun, Xin; Zheng, Hongai; Jiang, Shuangyan; Zhu, Meilin; Zhou, Yao; Wang, Derui; Fan, Yankun; Hu, Lili; Zhang, Daquan; Zhang, Lizhi
• Is Part Of: New journal of chemistry. Volume 46:Number 13(2022)
• Page Start: 5939
• Page End: 5947
• Publication Date: 2022-02-25
• Subjects: Chemistry -- Periodicals; Chimie -- Périodiques; 540
• DOI: 10.1039/d1nj05389b
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1144-0546

Abstract

Abstract : Electrons are transferred through GQDs, thereby accelerating the reduction of Fe 3+ to Fe 2+ and enhancing the activation of PMS. Abstract : The sulfate radical-based advanced oxidation processes (SR-AOPs) are well-established and efficient techniques for the degradation of organic pollutants. Fe 2+ is used as an environmentally friendly and cost-effective catalyst for activating peroxymonosulfate (PMS) to generate sulfate radicals (SO4 − ˙). In some past studies, the slow process of reducing Fe 3+ to Fe 2+ reduced the overall reaction rate of the SR-AOP system. To overcome this challenge, in this work, we for the first time fabricated a new composite activator, FeOCl decorated by graphene quantum dots (GQDs), by a facile method for activating PMS. The experimental results demonstrate that the as-prepared FeOCl/GQD catalysts can efficiently degrade organic pollutants and kill Escherichia coli through activating PMS to generate active species. Notably, the FeOCl/(16.7 wt%) GQD composite can activate PMS to degrade organics (97.8% of RhB within 30 min) and inactivate E. coli (99.1% within 10 min) with a pH range from 3 to 11. Moreover, mechanism analyses showed that the active species were SO4 − ˙, ˙OH, 1 O2 and O2 − ˙ in the FeOCl/(16.7 wt%) GQDs + PMS system, and SO4 − ˙ and 1 O2 were proved to be the main active species. The addition of GQDs promoted the reduction of Fe 3+ to Fe 2+, thereby accelerating the degradation rate. Our study suggests that the promising strategy of exploiting highly efficient AOP platforms has many applications.