Copper Oxide-Antimony Oxide Entrapped Alginate Hydrogel as Efficient Catalyst for Selective Reduction of 2-Nitrophenol

Sher Bahadar Khan; Esraa M Bakhsh; Kalsoom Akhtar; Tahseen Kamal; Yan Shen; Abdullah M Asiri

doi:10.3390/polym14030458

Copper Oxide-Antimony Oxide Entrapped Alginate Hydrogel as Efficient Catalyst for Selective Reduction of 2-Nitrophenol

Polymers (Basel). 2022 Jan 24;14(3):458. doi: 10.3390/polym14030458.

Authors

Sher Bahadar Khan^{1

2}, Esraa M Bakhsh¹, Kalsoom Akhtar¹, Tahseen Kamal^{1

2}, Yan Shen³, Abdullah M Asiri^{1

2}

Affiliations

¹ Chemistry Department, Faculty of Science, King Abdulaziz University, P.O. Box 80203, Jeddah 21589, Saudi Arabia.
² Center of Excellence for Advanced Materials Research, King Abdulaziz University, P.O. Box 80203, Jeddah 21589, Saudi Arabia.
³ Wuhan National Laboratory for Optoelectronics, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Luoyu Road 1037, Wuhan 430074, China.

Abstract

Copper oxide-antimony oxide (Cu₂O-Sb₂O₃) was prepared and entrapped inside Na-alginate hydrogel (Alg@Cu₂O-Sb₂O₃). The developed Alg@Cu₂O-Sb₂O₃ was used as catalytic reactor for the reduction of 4-nitrophenol (4-NP), 2-nitrophenol (2-NP), 2,6-dinitrophenol (2,6-DNP), methyl orange (MO), congo red (CR), acridine orange (AO), methylene blue (MB) and potassium ferricyanide (K₃[Fe(CN)₆]). Alg@Cu₂O-Sb₂O₃ was found to be selective and more efficient for the reduction of 2-NP among all the pollutants. Therefore, 2-NP was selected for a detailed study to optimize various parameters, e.g., the catalyst amount, reducing agent concentration, 2-NP concentration and recyclability. Alg@Cu₂O-Sb₂O₃ was found to be very stable and easily recyclable for the reduction of 2-NP. The Alg@Cu₂O-Sb₂O₃ nanocatalyst reduced 2-NP in 1.0 min, having a rate constant of 3.8187 min^-1.

Keywords: Na-alginate; catalytic reduction; dyes; environmental applications; hydrogel wrapped copper oxide-antimony oxide; nitrophenols; potassium ferricyanide; water treatment.