Enhanced heterogeneous Fenton-like activity by Cu-doped BiFeO3 perovskite for degradation of organic pollutants

Abstract

Heterogeneous Fenton-like reaction has been extensively investigated to eliminate refractory organic contaminants in wastewater, but it usually shows low catalytic performance due to difficulty in reduction from Fe(III) to Fe(II). In this study, enhanced catalytic efficiency was obtained by employing Cu-doped BiFeO3 as heterogeneous Fenton-like catalysts, which exhibited higher catalytic performance toward the activation of H2O2 for phenol degradation than un-doped BiFeO3. BiFe0.8Cu0.2O3 displayed the best performance, which yielded 91% removal of phenol (10 mg L–1) in 120 min. The pseudo first-order kinetic rate constant of phenol degradation in BiFe0.8Cu0.2O3 catalyzed heterogeneous Fenton-like reaction was 5 times higher than those of traditional heterogeneous Fenton-like catalysts, such as Fe3O4 and goethite. The phenol degradation efficiency could still reach 83% after 4 cycles, which implied the good stability of BiFe0.8Cu0.2O3. The high catalytic activity of BiFe0.8Cu0.2O3 was attributed to the fact that the doping Cu into BiFeO3 could promote the generation of Fe(II) in the catalyst and then facilitate the activation of H2O2 to degrade the organic pollutants.