Electrospun magnetic cobalt-embedded carbon nanofiber as a heterogeneous catalyst for activation of oxone for degradation of Amaranth dye

Kun-Yi Andrew Lin; Jyun-Ting Lin; Xiao-Yu Lu; Ching Hung; Yi-Feng Lin

doi:10.1016/j.jcis.2017.06.057

Electrospun magnetic cobalt-embedded carbon nanofiber as a heterogeneous catalyst for activation of oxone for degradation of Amaranth dye

J Colloid Interface Sci. 2017 Nov 1:505:728-735. doi: 10.1016/j.jcis.2017.06.057. Epub 2017 Jun 19.

Authors

Kun-Yi Andrew Lin¹, Jyun-Ting Lin², Xiao-Yu Lu², Ching Hung³, Yi-Feng Lin⁴

Affiliations

¹ Department of Environmental Engineering, National Chung Hsing University, 250 Kuo-Kuang Rd., Taichung, Taiwan. Electronic address: linky@nchu.edu.tw.
² Department of Environmental Engineering, National Chung Hsing University, 250 Kuo-Kuang Rd., Taichung, Taiwan.
³ Department of Civil Engineering, National Cheng Kung University, 1 University Rd., Tainan, Taiwan.
⁴ Department of Chemical Engineering and R&D Center for Membrane Technology, Chung Yuan Christian University, 200 Chung Pei Rd., Chungli, Taoyuan, Taiwan. Electronic address: yflin@cycu.edu.tw.

PMID: 28662475
DOI: 10.1016/j.jcis.2017.06.057

Abstract

A cobalt-embedded carbon nanofiber (CoCNF) is developed in this study by electrospinning techniques. Through one-step carbonization, the electrospun Co-polyacrylonitrile nanofiber is converted to CoCNF. The resulting CoCNF consists of cobalt nanoparticles quite evenly distributed over CNF and also exhibits magnetically controllability, making it a suitable heterogeneous catalyst for activating Oxone (OX) to degrade organic contaminants. As degradation of Acid Red 27 (AR) is employed as a model reaction, CoCNF is validated to activate OX for generating sulfate radicals and then degrading AR. While a higher dosage of CoCNF and OX enhances AR degradation, CoCNF plays a more influential role in CoCNF-OX. AR degradation by CoCNF-OX is much enhanced at elevated temperature, and also favorable under the neutral condition. CoCNF-OX still remains quite effective for AR degradation even in the presence of salts and surfactants. The mechanism of AR degradation is elucidated by evaluating the effects of radical scavengers and the degradation is attributed to sulfate and derivative hydroxyl radicals. CoCNF is shown to activate OX for multiple times to degrade AR even without regeneration treatments. These results and findings validate that CoCNF can be a promising and advantageous heterogeneous for activating OX in advanced oxidation processes. The preparation method shown here can be also employed for fabricating other functional metal-embedded CNF for various applications.

Keywords: Acid Red; Amaranth; Carbon nanofiber; Cobalt; Electrospun; Oxone.