Particulate copper electrodeposited on carbon felt for degradation of low concentration of methyl iodide in liquid radioactive wastes

Abstract

Abstract In this work, the study of copper particles deposition on to carbon felt was presented by pulse electrodeposition method to electrochemically degrade methyl iodide (CH3I, 1 mg L−1) in aqueous solution. In order to solve the problems linked to the heterogeneous potential distribution in the 3-D porous structure, which lead to the so-called ‘black core’, we successfully used low concentration of copper salt (1 mM) and negative deposition potential (−2.5 V) to obtain Cu-nanoparticles/carbon felt (Cu-nano/CF) electrode, the copper coating improved the specific surface area of carbon felt from ∼0.07 to 0.7 m2 g−1 with high catalytic activity. Results show that 98.1% of CH3I can be removed with the Cu-nano/CF electrode in 120 min.