3D mesoporous CuFe2O4 as a catalyst for photo-Fenton removal of sulfonamide antibiotics at near neutral pH.

Increasing the amount of surface active sites of the material may be a feasible way to improve the efficiency ofthe generation of Fe2+ in the photo-Fenton process. In this work, a simple synthesis method was adopted to synthesize 3D ordered mesoporous CuFe2O4 with large specific surface areaby using ferric nitrate and copper nitrate as the precursor and KIT-6 as the template. The synthesized materials were characterized by nitrogen adsorption-desorption, XRD, TEM, FT-IR and UV-vis DRS. The catalytic properties of the mesoporous material were thoroughly evaluated by activating hydrogen peroxide to remove sulfonamides in near neutral water. Some of the reaction factors, such as the dose of hydrogen peroxide, catalyst usage and pollute concentration, were cautiously tested and discussed. When the catalyst dose is 0.2 g/L, the substrate concentration is 10 mg/L and the concentration of hydrogen peroxide is 10 mM, sulfamethoxazole is almost completely transformed within two hours and its mineralization level reached 31.42%. In the further study of mechanism, hydroxyl radical is proved to be the main active free radical based on EPR. Moreover, mesoporous copper ferric has good circulation, which indicates that it may have excellent application in the field of photo-Fenton.