Degradation of organic pollutants through activating bisulfite with lanthanum ferrite-loaded biomass carbon

Xiangyu Meng; Yao Li; Yiqing Liu; Runyu Zhou; Yongsheng Fu; Junmin Chen

doi:10.1039/d3ra04271e

Degradation of organic pollutants through activating bisulfite with lanthanum ferrite-loaded biomass carbon

RSC Adv. 2023 Aug 21;13(35):24819-24829. doi: 10.1039/d3ra04271e. eCollection 2023 Aug 11.

Authors

Xiangyu Meng¹, Yao Li¹, Yiqing Liu¹, Runyu Zhou², Yongsheng Fu¹, Junmin Chen¹

Affiliations

¹ Faculty of Geosciences and Environmental Engineering, Southwest Jiaotong University Chengdu 611756 China liuyq@swjtu.edu.cn.
² Zhejiang Development & Planning Institute Hangzhou 310012 China.

Abstract

The removal of methylene blue (MB) in water is a challenging task due to its toxicity, carcinogenicity and resistance to biodegradation. Accordingly, a novel composite catalyst (BC@LF) was prepared by loading lanthanum ferrite (LaFeO₃) on biomass carbon (BC) to activate bisulfite (BS) for methylene MB removal in this study. Characterization via scanning electron microscopy (SEM), X-ray diffraction (XRD) and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) indicated that LaFeO₃ was successfully loaded on BC. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) analysis suggested that [triple bond, length as m-dash]Fe(iii) was the main active site for BS activation. It was found that 99.4% MB was removed within 60 min in BC@LF/BS system. Sulfate radical (SO₄˙^-) and hydroxyl radicals (HO˙) were proved to be responsible for MB removal in the BC@LF/BS system and SO₅˙^- might also be involved in MB removal. The degradation efficiency of MB in the BC@LF/BS system decreased with increasing pH, while the adsorption efficiency of BC@LF for MB improved with increasing pH. Additionally, BC@LF exhibited good reusability for BS activation in successive uses. The BC@LF/BS system exhibited favorable removal effect for various organic compounds, indicating that it has good applicability in the treatment of organic wastewater.