Preparation of hollow magnetic porous zirconia fibers as effective catalyst carriers for Fenton reaction

This article reports a facile synthetic method for preparing hollow magnetic porous zirconia fibers based on electrospinning and their application as a carrier for the Fenton reaction. First, we prepared uniform hollow porous ZrO2 nanofibers by employing the coaxial electrospinning technique, followed by heat treatment. By adding magnetic particles to the inner electrospinning precursor solution, magnetic nanoparticles were conveniently assembled into the hollow ZrO2 fibers. The hollow magnetic porous zirconia fibers have a BET specific surface area of 34.70 m2 g−1 and a pore volume of 0.18 cm3 g−1. At the same time, the catalyst functioned as an excellent carrier to load iron ions for the Fenton reaction. These iron-loaded fibers exhibited excellent catalytic performance towards the degradation of organic pollutants, such as methylene blue and phenol. Methylene blue with different initial concentrations (from 50 ppm to 300 ppm) can be effectively degraded (99% to 90%). More importantly, the fibers have unique magnetic properties and can be easily removed and reused, thus showing great potential for practical applications.