Low-cost iron-doped catalyst for phenol degradation by heterogeneous Fenton.

The aim of this work was to study the feasibility of textile sludge as a precursor to prepare catalysts for catalytic wet peroxide oxidation (CWPO) by chemical and thermal treatments. Textile sludge was characterized by physical-chemical and metal composition analyses. The chemical activation was evaluated using iron sulfate and the thermal treatment was carried out at 720 °C in a vacuum pyrolysis reactor. Two catalysts with iron contents of 1.5% and 5.6% were selected. Process parameters influence on CWPO of phenol were evaluated and a maximum removal of phenol and TOC was observed at pH 3 and 60 °C, using 3 g L-1 of the catalyst containing 5.6% of iron and 11.8 mmol L-1 of H2O2. Metal analysis indicated that the textile sludge is suitable to be employed as both iron catalyst and adsorbent. The catalysts characterization indicated a reasonable surface area with a well-developed microporosity and the presence of Hematite structures in the carbonaceous matrix. The degradation process achieved 98.2% of phenol conversion, 68.2% of mineralization and 2.11 mg L-1 of iron leaching in 150 min of reaction. The catalyst presented activity for up to 5 cycles of use, but with loss of efficiency.

Free and Ca-Alginate Beads Immobilized Horseradish Peroxidase for the Removal of Reactive Dyes: an Experimental and Modeling Study.

The aim of this work was to remove the dyes Reactive Blue 221 (RB 221) and Reactive Blue 198 (RB 198) of synthetic effluent using the immobilized enzyme horseradish peroxidase (HRP) in Ca-alginate beads. Experimental parameters affecting the dye removal process such as the effect of pH, temperature, hydrogen peroxide concentration, mass capsules, and reuse were evaluated, and a numerical model of mass transfer was developed. A maximum removal of 93 and 75%, respectively, for the dyes RB 221 and RB 198, at pH 5.5 and temperature of 30 °C, concentration of hydrogen peroxide of 43.75 µM for dye RB 221 and 37.5 µM for the dye of RB 198 was obtained. A removal reaction of 180 min for RB 221 and 240 min for RB 198 was observed. Three reuse cycles of use of immobilized enzyme were achieved for both dyes. The numerical model proposed led to a good fit compared to experimental data. The HRP enzyme immobilized in Ca-alginate capsules showed a great potential for biotechnological applications, especially for the removal of reactive dyes.

The application of textile sludge adsorbents for the removal of Reactive Red 2 dye.

Sludge from the textile industry was used as a low-cost adsorbent to remove the dye Reactive Red 2 from an aqueous solution. Adsorbents were prepared through the thermal and chemical treatment of sludge originating from physical-chemical (PC) and biological (BIO) effluent treatment processes. The adsorbent characterization was carried out through physical-chemical analysis, X-ray fluorescence (XRF) spectroscopy, Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy, pHPZC determination, Boehm titration method, Brunauer-Emmett-Teller (BET) surface area analysis and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). Batch kinetic experiments and adsorption isotherm modeling were conducted under different pH and temperature conditions. The results for the kinetic studies indicate that the adsorption processes associated with these systems can be described by a pseudo-second-order model and for the equilibrium data the Langmuir model provided the best fit. The adsorption was strongly dependent on the pH but not on the temperature within the ranges studied. The maxima adsorption capacities were 159.3 mg g(-1) for the BIO adsorbent and 213.9 mg g(-1) for PC adsorbent at pH of 2 and 25 °C.