ABSTRACT
Green and cost-effective eradication of pollutants from water is an important and long-standing goal in environmental chemistry. A broad spectrum of toxic organics in water was efficiently destroyed in the presence of dioxygen in combination with hydrazine hydrate at 150 °C. Under this operating condition, two typical classes of toxic organic chemicals, phenols and nitrobenzene derivatives were totally destroyed. The mineralization rate of these organics was 35-86%. Furthermore, when this degradation system was applied to degradation of actual waste water of wood pulp bleaching with chlorine (COD: 1830 mg/L), 77% COD decrease and 52% TOC mineralization of the wastewater were observed. In each case, the major degradation products are small molecular compounds, such as methanol, formic acid and acetic acid except CO/CO(2). In the case of chlorophenols degradation, no dioxins and any other toxic compounds are detected by (1)H NMR. After degradation reaction, the hydrazine was also decomposed into N(2) and H(2)O, and no remaining hydrazine is found.
