Synthesis, Characterization, and In-Situ H2o2 Generation Activity of Activated Carbon/Goethite for Heterogeneous Electro-Fenton Degradation of Organics From Woolen Textile Wastewater

Abstract

Developing effective and highly stable Heterogeneous electro-Fenton (HEF) catalysts for removing organic pollutants from aquatic environments is a challenge in the scientific world. In this study, acti-vated carbon/Goethite/Fe3O4/ZnO was synthesized as a novel eco-friendly and economic HEF catalyst to remove chemical oxygen demand (COD) from woolen textile wastewater (WTW). According to char-acterization analyses, the catalyst was in a polycrystalline structure, had good stability (-34.53 mV), and had an average pore diameter was 8.017 nm. According to catalytic activity results, COD removal by anodic oxidation (AO) was 44.29%, AO-H2O2 was 58.99%, and adsorption was 18.5%. center dot OH and center dot O2- responsible for COD removal with 76.21% and 28.07%. The low p-value (<0.0001), high F-value (456.90), high Adeq. the precision value (76.74) and high R2 (0.9977) of the model show that the estab-lished quadratic model is significant, valid, successful in estimating data, and reliable in navigating design space. Optimal conditions were determined as aeration rate: 2.86 L/min, current density: 5.38 mA/cm2, catalyst dose: 0.194 g/L, reaction time: 85.41 min. COD removals were determined experimentally and theoretically as 96.39% and 98.66%. The total cost was $ 1.75 to remove 1 kg COD from WTW. The syn-thesized catalyst showed good performance over five cycles (82%), suggesting its use on an industrial scale.(c) 2023 The Korean Society of Industrial and Engineering Chemistry. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.