Abstract
A novel and simple apparatus for the continuous generation of hydroxyl radicals has been constructed for the first time. In this paper, we focused on the investigation into the kinetic study of hydroxyl radical formation in the preparation process. The effects of the process parameters (such as the electrolyte solution concentration, graphite dosage, the applied current strength, and air flow rate) on the concentration of hydroxyl radicals were investigated in detail. The concentration of hydroxyl radicals first increased with the concentration of sodium dodecyl benzene sulfonate electrolyte solution, graphite dosage, applied current strength, and air flow rate, and then decreased. The concentration of ·OH and time well fit a third-order model of {C(·OH) = B1 × t + B2 × t2 + B3 × t3 + intercept}. The highest concentration of hydroxyl radicals was 7.98 × 10−3 mol L−1 under the following conditions: sodium dodecyl benzene sulfonate concentration 10.0% (w/v), graphite dosage 5.0 g, applied current strength 10 mA, and air flow rate 1.0 L h−1. Our hydroxyl radical generation method can achieve the preparation of higher-concentration hydroxyl radicals continuously without using strong acid reagents. Moreover, our method has low energy consumption by using milliampere-level current. It is a green and efficient method for the generation of hydroxyl radicals. The kinetic study of hydroxyl radical generation can quantitatively predict the concentration changes with process parameters and provide a good prediction of hydroxyl radical generation, which is crucially important in industrial applications.
Highlights
The hydroxyl radical ($OH) has a standard oxidation–reduction potential of 2.8 V, which is only lower than that of F.1 As its oxidation characteristics are non-selective and it can react with almost all types of substances, $OH can initiate and perform many free radical oxidation reactions
We studied the in uences of the sodium dodecyl benzene sulfonate (SDBS) solution concentration, graphite dosage, applied current strength, and air ow rate on the concentration changes of hydroxyl radicals
On tting the data with Origin 8.0, we found that a third-order model appropriately describes the changes of hydroxyl radical concentration overtime
Summary
We designed and set up a continuous hydroxyl radical generation apparatus for the rst time, and achieved the facile exfoliation of graphite to prepare graphene.[16] For industrial applications and mass production, the kinetic study of hydroxyl radical generation is necessary, because it can give a good prediction for hydroxyl radical generation kinetics in experiments, which allows us to estimate the initial rate and extent of our continuous and efficient hydroxyl radical generation method. Research on the kinetics of our continuous hydroxyl radical generation method has not yet been reported. We used a third-order model to study the kinetics mechanism of our method, in order to establish the generation kinetic equation. We studied the in uences of the sodium dodecyl benzene sulfonate (SDBS) solution concentration, graphite dosage, applied current strength, and air ow rate on the concentration changes of hydroxyl radicals
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