The Highly Efficient Degradation on Nitrobenzene by Using Nano-copper-cobalt Bimetallic Oxide as Heterogeneous Fenton Catalysts: Efficiency, Dynamic and Mechanism

Abstract

Abstract The nano-copper-cobalt bimetallic composite oxide (NCC) has been synthesized under hydrothermal conditions, which was further characterized by SEM, TEM-EDS, XRD, XPS and FTIR-ATR. NCC was used as heterogeneous Fenton catalyst to degrade nitrobenzene (NB). During the degradation process, H2O2 can be activated efficiently by NCC, and NB was degraded rapidly with high efficiency among wide pH range (3-9). In detail, NB with concentration of 10 mg/L (pH=7) can be completely degraded within 45min at room temperature, in which the amount of NCC was 2.5g/L, and that of H2O2 was 0.8mol/L. OH· was the main active reactive oxidation species (ROS), which was verified by free radical quenching experiments and benzoic acid (BA) probe experiments. The stability of NCC has been proved by executing four cycling experiments, and no obvious decrease can be found on its degradation ratio. Finally, the degradation mechanism was proposed in terms of their interface pictures. This work paves a new way for the application of NCC as heterogeneous Fenton catalysts.