Development of Magnetically Recoverable Carbon Nanocomposites for the Catalytic Wet Peroxide Oxidation of 4-Nitrophenol Solutions

摘要

Catalytic wet peroxide oxidation (CWPO) is a well-known process for the elimination of organic pollutants from industrial process waters and wastewaters. Despite the high catalytic activity obtained when Fe~(2+) ions are used as catalyst (through the so-called Fenton process), this approach usually requires a final separation step to remove the homogeneous catalyst from the treated water, increasing treatment costs. To overcome this drawback heterogeneous catalysts have been considered. Among these, carbon materials were found to be active catalysts for CWPO . However, despite the improvement of their performance, metal-free carbon materials still present low catalytic activity when compared with metal- based catalysts . Thus, the combination of the two phases may be considered to develop magnetically recoverable nanostructured carbon composites to serve as effective catalysts for CWPO - with in-situ magnetic separation representing an additional advantage to the process. The main goal of the present work is the development of highly active heterogeneous catalysts, with stable properties against metal leaching and easily recoverable characteristics for catalyst reuse. In this context, magnetic materials with different properties were synthesized and their performance in CWPO was investigated using 4-nitrophenol (4-NP) as a non-biodegradable model pollutant.