Synergistic activation of peroxymonosulfate by MnO/Fe3C encapsulated in N-doped carbon nanosheets for the enhanced degradation of bisphenol A

Abstract

Our work is mainly focused on the N-doped porous carbon nanosheets with metal or metal oxide catalysts embedded for the activation of peroxymonosulfate. MOF derived MnO/Fe3C encapsulated in N-doped carbon nanosheets (MnO/Fe3C@NC) with controlled structure have been synthesized and showed more excellent performance than traditional Fe/Mn-based catalyst as a PMS activator. Specifically, in this study, the magnetic MnO/Fe3C@NC-1 catalyst as peroxymonosulfate (PMS) activator was successfully fabricated by calcination of Mn and Fe-based bimetallic organic framework (MnFe-MOF-74), which was converted into mix-phased MnO and Fe3C. The system of PMS + MnO/Fe3C@NC-1 completely degraded 10 mg/L of bisphenol A (BPA) in less than 20 min. The MnO/Fe3C@NC-1 exhibited better activity in PMS activation than MnO@NC and Fe/Fe3C@NC, indicating that the synergistic effect between MnO and Fe3C could be beneficial to enhance the catalytic performance. The competitive radical quenching technique and electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) measurements revealed that both SO4•− and •OH might be mainly generated. Various influential factors affecting catalytic performance were systematically investigated. The magnetic catalyst also manifested an excellent stable performance in heterogeneous BPA oxidation for several runs. We believe that this work will provide a new prospect for the synthesis of MOF-derived catalysts with high catalytic performance for PMS activation.