Synthesis and Characterization of Montmorillonite Supported Zero-Valent Bimetallic Fe/Ni Nanoparticles for the Removal of Triclosan

Abstract

As an important industrial material, triclosan is widely used in manufacturing, and similar to many materials of its kind, triclosan causes significant environmental pollution, especially water pollution. In the organic pollutant degradation field, iron nanoparticles are among the most popular catalysts and have been successfully applied in various kinds of environmental modification, but there is still plenty of room for improvement. As we will show in this study, combined with nickel, the montmorillonite-supported Fe–Ni bimetallic nano-systems gained better organic contaminant degradation ability and stability than iron nanoparticles. By means of X-ray diffraction (XRD), Brunauer– Emmett–Teller (BET) surface area analysis, Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectra analysis and scanning electron microscopy (SEM), the characteristics of the montmorillonite-supported Fe–Ni nanocomposites were studied in detail. BET analysis shows that montmorillonite restrains the aggregation of Fe–Ni to reduce the size of its particles. By adding montmorillonite, Fe–Ni materials are transformed into uniform mesoporous structures, which are beneficial for adsorption and catalysis. The layers of montmorillonite and zero-valent metal constitute a “house-of-cards” structure. Based on FTIR spectral analysis, the stretching vibration of montmorillonite hydroxyl groups is present only in the spectra of supported nanoparticles and not in the spectra of unsupported nanoparticles. The degradation ability of different catalysts is tested by a series of experiments and measured by checking the remaining triclosan in polluted water. The test results confirmed that Mont/Fe–Ni nanoparticles exhibit the best removal efficiency, which is approximately 80% after 90 min.