Sono-enhanced degradation of dye pollutants with the use of H2O2 activated by Fe3O4 magnetic nanoparticles as peroxidase mimetic.

Sono-enhanced degradation of a dye pollutant Rhodamine B (RhB) was investigated by using H(2)O(2) as a green oxidant and Fe(3)O(4) magnetic nanoparticles (MNPs) as a peroxidase mimetic. It was found that Fe(3)O(4) MNPs could catalyze the break of H(2)O(2) to remove RhB in a wide pH range from 3.0 to 9.0 and its peroxidase-like activity was significantly enhanced by the ultrasound irradiation. At pH 5.0 and temperature 55 degrees C, the ultrasound-assisted H(2)O(2)-Fe(3)O(4) catalysis removed about 95% of RhB (0.02 mmol L(-1)) in 15 min with a apparent rate constant of 0.15 min(-1) for the degradation of RhB, being 6.5 and 37.6 folds of that in the simple catalytic H(2)O(2)-Fe(3)O(4) system, and the simple ultrasonic US-H(2)O(2) systems, respectively. The beneficial synergistic behavior between Fe(3)O(4) catalysis and ultrasonic was demonstrated to be dependent on Fe(3)O(4) dosage, H(2)O(2) concentration, pH value and temperature. As a tentative explanation, the observed significant synergistic effects was attributed to the positive interaction between cavitation effect accelerating the catalytic breakdown of H(2)O(2) over Fe(3)O(4) nanoparticles, and the function of Fe(3)O(4) MNPs providing more nucleation sites for the cavitation inception.