Efficient Degradation of Atrazine by Magnetic CoFe2O4/g-C3N4 Catalyzed Peroxymonosulfate and Its Enhancement of Photocatalytic Ability Under Visible-Light

Abstract

The Magnetic photocatalytic cobalt ferrite/graphitic-carbon nitride (CoFe2O4/g-C3N4) composites with enhanced photocatalytic activity were successfully fabricated through a simple calcination method. Scanning electron microscopy, powder X-ray diffraction, and infrared spectroscopy were applied to characterize the samples. The photocatalytic behavior of CoFe2O4/g-C3N4 was assessed by degradation of atrazine in photo Fenton-like system under visible light irradiation. The results showed that CoFe2O4/g-C3N4 with 2.0 gL–1 catalyst loading in the presence of 1 mM peroxymonosulfate (PMS) exhibited the best catalytic performance, and more than 97% of atrazine was destructed in 12 min. This enhancement could be attributed to the synergistic effect between CoFe2O4 and g-C3N4 promoting longer lifetime of separated electron–hole pairs derived from the formation of the heterojunction between CoFe2O4 and g-C3N4. This could enhance the composite-mediated activation of PMS for the visible-light driven degradation of atrazine. Moreover, the quenching tests showed that sulfate radicals were responsible for the atrazine degradation. CoFe2O4/g-C3N4 composites have strong magnetic ability, thus their recovery from water could be readily achieved by applying external magnetic field. This study demonstrates reasonable performance of the PMS/CoFe2O4/g-C3N4 system in water matrix as potentially important candidate for environmental remediation.