Heterogeneous electro-Fenton removal of polyacrylamide in aqueous solution over CoFe2O4 catalyst

View large Download slide View large Download slide Close modal Polyacrylamide (PAM) in environmental water has become a major problem in water pollution management due to its high molecular mass, high viscosity and non-absorption by soil. CoFe 2 O 4 with strong magnetic properties was prepared by solvent-thermal synthesis method and used as the catalyst for the removal on PAM in heterogeneous Electro-Fenton (EF) system. It showed that the removal efficiency of PAM by the heterogeneous EF system using CoFe 2 O 4 catalyst was 92.01% at pH 3 after 120 min. Further studies indicated that ·OH was the most significant active species for the removal of PAM, and the contribution of ·O 2 − and SO 4 ·− for the removal of PAM was less than 15%. The reusability test and XRD, XPS, FTIR analyses proved that the catalyst had good stability. After a repeated use for five times, the catalyst still had a high PAM removal rate and stable structure. The valence distribution and functional groups of the phase components of the catalyst did not change significantly before and after the reaction. The possible mechanism of catalyst activation of H 2 O 2 was deduced by mechanism investigation. The CoFe 2 O 4 is an efficient and promising catalyst for the removal of PAM wastewater. A Co–Fe bimetallic oxide catalyst was prepared by hydrothermal method and used to treat polymer-containing wastewater. The prepared catalyst has strong magnetic properties, is easy to recover and can be reused (resource reuse). In the CoFe 2 O 4 heterogeneous system, the higher contaminant removal rate can be achieved with less catalyst dosage.