Enhanced photocatalytic degradation of organic contaminants over CaFe2O4 under visible LED light irradiation mediated by peroxymonosulfate

A simple sol-gel approach is proposed herein to fabricate CaFe2O4 for the degradation of various organic pollutants (rhodamine B (RhB), tetracycline hydrochloride, humic acid, and methylene orange) under LED light irradiation mediated by peroxymonosulfate (PMS). The results indicate that the calcina...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inJournal of materials science & technology Vol. 62; pp. 34 - 43
Main Authors Guo, Sheng, Yang, Zhixiong, Zhang, Huali, Yang, Wei, Li, Jun, Zhou, Kun
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Elsevier Ltd 30.01.2021
Subjects
CaFe2O4
Degradation
DFT calculations
LED light
Peroxymonosulfate
Degradation
LED light
CaFe2O4
Peroxymonosulfate
DFT calculations
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Summary:A simple sol-gel approach is proposed herein to fabricate CaFe2O4 for the degradation of various organic pollutants (rhodamine B (RhB), tetracycline hydrochloride, humic acid, and methylene orange) under LED light irradiation mediated by peroxymonosulfate (PMS). The results indicate that the calcination temperature can significantly influence the performance of CaFe2O4 for PMS activation, and the CaFe2O4 sample obtained at 800 °C (CaFe2O4-800) exhibits the best efficiency in degrading RhB, which is much higher than that of Fe2O3-800. This can be attributed to the efficient separation of photogenerated electrons (e−) and holes (h+) by PMS, which is validated by transient photocurrent response and photoluminescence measurements. Results from density functional theory calculations indicate that the valence band of CaFe2O4-800 exhibits a high concentration of carriers and weak localization of electrons, which are favorable for PMS activation. Radical scavenging results confirm that h+ and O2•− are the dominant reactive species. Moreover, CaFe2O4-800 not only demonstrated a stable performance during eight cycling runs with negligible iron leaching but also exhibited excellent degradation efficiency under natural water and sunlight. Finally, the mechanism and pathway of RhB degradation by the CaFe2O4-800/PMS/LED system are also proposed. This work presents the enormous prospect of CaFe2O4 as an environmentally benign photocatalyst for PMS activation.
ISSN:1005-0302
1941-1162
DOI:10.1016/j.jmst.2020.05.057