Promotion of conductive carbon black loaded CuFe2O4 on the oxidative degradation of phenol by persulfate

The development of cheap and efficient catalysts for persulfate activation in advanced oxidation processes based on persulfate is important and promising in the wastewater treatment field. Herein, conductive carbon black loaded CuFe 2 O 4 (CCB-CuFe 2 O 4 ) had been prepared via a sol-gel method and was used as a catalyst to activate persulfate for the removal of phenol in water. The CCB-CuFe 2 O 4 was characterized by X-ray diffraction, Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy, Brunauer–Emmett–Teller, and Raman spectroscopy, which confirmed that CuFe 2 O 4 nucleated on the defect of CCB. The performance of the activation on persulfate was studied by determining the concentration of phenol and chemical oxygen demand of the water. The activity of the catalyst is the highest when the content of CuFe 2 O 4 in the catalyst is 10%. The removal rate of 100 mg/L phenol reached 100% in 30 min under the optimized operation condition, which was 2.0 g/L CCB-CuFe 2 O 4 , 2.0 mmol/L persulfate (PS) and pH = 11. The factors of effect on the catalysis performance were discussed. CCB-CuFe 2 O 4 can be used in the pH range of 3~11 and the presence of HCO 3 – can promote phenol degradation rate. The use of CCB-CuFe 2 O 4 catalyst obviously reduced the dose of PS in the process of phenol oxidation degradation. Furtherly, quenching experiments verified that the most important reactive species in the CCB-CuFe 2 O 4 /PS/phenol system is singlet oxygen ( 1 O 2 ).