Facile fabrication of CuFe2O4 coated with carbon quantum dots nanocomposite as an efficient heterogeneous catalyst toward the reduction of nitroaniline compounds for management of aquatic resources

Abstract

The main objective of the current study is to scrutinize the fabrication of facile carbon quantum dots (CQDs) of glucose along with CuFe2O4-CQD nanocomposite and its catalytic reduction towards 2-Nitroaniline (2-NA) and 4-Nitroaniline (4-NA). Considering this, glucose-CQDs and nanocomposite of CuFe2O4-CQD were synthesized via hydrothermal and co-precipitation methods, respectively. Afterward, the fabricated nanocomposite as a promising nanocatalyst was employed to catalyze the 2-NA and 4-NA as a model of toxic organic pollutants into the 1,2-diaminobenzene (1,2-DAB) and 1,4-diaminobenzene (1,4-DAB) with a reducing agent of sodium borohydride (NaBH4), sequentially. The developed CQDs and magnetic nanocomposite were analyzed using FT-IR, XRD, VSM, SEM, TEM, BET surface area, BJH pore volume, and UV–Vis techniques. The results explicated that the magnetically recyclable CuFe2O4-CQD catalyst demonstrated high activity (∼ 96.7 % conversion within 45 s, for 2-NA and ∼ 96.5 % conversion within 18 s, for 4-NA) and efficient recyclability (up to 5 Cycles). The pseudo-second-order apparent reaction constant rate (k2) of 2-NA and 4-NA reduction were 7.12×10−2 and 1.77×10−1, respectively. These findings reveal that the fabricated catalyst offers a new method for the simultaneous reduction of 2-nitroaniline as well as 4-nitroaniline simply for environmental safety purposes.