Sulfoxides are widely recognized as probes for identifying and evaluating the generation and contribution of high-valent metals in advanced oxidation processes. However, this paper was surprising to find that the presence of sulfoxides selectively enhanced the degradation of specific pollutants in the Fe(II)/PS system. Represented by methyl phenyl sulfoxide (PMSO), scavenging experiments for active species showed that the presence of PMSO transformed the mechanism from radical dominated (55.60 %) to nonradical dominated (60.91 %), greatly improving the anti-interference ability of the system. Determining the concentration of Fe(Ⅱ) and total iron (Fe tot ) in solution revealed that the presence of PMSO improved the utilization efficiency of Fe(II) and PS by enhancing the redox reaction between Fe(II) and PS, and resulted in the generation of Fe(IV) more favorably than the generation of SO 4 ·− and ·OH. Additionally, comparing the proven high-valent iron dominated Fe(II)/PI system with the free radical dominated Fe(II)/PS system of this paper, it was revealed that the selectively enhanced oxidation of PMSO specifically targets the free radical dominated system. Experiments have shown that the degradation of acetaminophen, ibuprofen, phenol, and p-chlorophenol was enhanced by PMSO, while the degradation of norfloxacin, primidone, chloramphenicol, sulfamethoxazole, p-nitrophenol, benzoic acid, and nitrobenzene was inhibited. Based on density functional theory (DFT) calculations, PMSO has a selectively enhanced degradation effect for organic pollutants with ionization potential (IP) below 8.66 eV, and vice versa, it has an inhibitory effect. The present study provides new insights into the contribution of sulfoxide to the assessment of high-valent metals and sheds new light on the mechanism of active species.
Sijing Chen,Zhen Li,Longsheng Wu,Lu Liu,Jingping Hu,Huijie Hou,Sha Liang,Jiakuan Yang
Hemin has attracted considerable interest as an efficient catalyst recently, however, its direct application is inefficient due to severe molecular aggregation. Immobilizing hemin on various supports is a feasible approach to address this issue. In this work, a CNTs-hemin catalyst was prepared by loading hemin onto multiwalled carbon nanotubes (CNTs) through ball milling. Compared with hemin, CNTs-hemin demonstrates remarkably enhanced performance in the peroxymonosulfate system, with a 650-fold improvement of apparent rate constant, reaching 97.8% degradation of sulfathiazole in 5 min. High-valent iron-oxo porphyrin cation ((Porp) +• Fe IV =O) radicals are proposed as the dominant reactive species in the CNTs-hemin/peroxymonosulfate system instead of sulfate radicals (SO 4 •- ), hydroxyl radicals (•OH), superoxide radicals (O 2 •- ) and singlet oxygen ( 1 O 2 ). More in-depth mechanisms reveal that the strong electron transfer between CNTs and hemin promotes the generation of (Porp) +• Fe IV =O radicals through a heterolysis pathway. This research enriches the understanding of the catalytic mechanism of supported biomimetic catalysts for PMS activation and provides a perspective on the role of support materials for catalytic activity .