Fenton-like degradation of sulfamerazine at nearly neutral pH using Fe-Cu-CNTs and Al0-CNTs for in-situ generation of H2O2/OH/O2−

In this paper, a novel Fenton-like system was constructed by a new catalyst (CNTs-Fe-Cu) combined with Al 0 -CNTs to in situ generate H 2 O 2 from activating O 2 for the degradation of sulfamerazine (SMR). The CNTs-Fe-Cu composite was prepared and characterized by XRD, SEM, EDS and BET methods. The results showed that H 2 O 2 could be generated in-situ by Al 0 -CNTs composite under oxygen aeration, which was then converted to OH and O 2 − radical by CNTs-Fe-Cu composite. The high removal efficiency of SMR could be obtained in Al 0 -CNTs/CNTs-Fe-Cu/O 2 system at a relatively broad range of pH. Furthermore, the removal efficiency of SMR and total organic carbon (TOC) was 85% and 60%, respectively under the following condition: initial pH = 5.8, T = 25 °C, O 2 flow rate = 400 mL/min, CNTs-Fe-Cu = 1 g/L, Al 0 -CNTs = 1 g/L, SMR = 50 mg/L, reaction time = 60 min. In addition, the intermediate products of SMR degradation were identified and the possible degradation pathways of SMR and the degradation mechanism of Al 0 -CNTs/CNTs-Fe-Cu/O 2 process were tentatively proposed.