Cation exchange resin immobilized bimetallic nickel-iron nanoparticles to facilitate their application in pollutants degradation.

Nanoscale zerovalent iron (nZVI) usually suffers from reduction of reactivity by aggregation, difficulty of assembling, environmental release and health concerns. Furthermore, data are lacking on the effect of cheap nickel on debromination of decabromodiphenyl ether (DBDE) by immobilized nZVI in aqueous system. In this study, strong acid polystyrene cation-exchange resins with particle diameter from 0.4 to 0.6 mm were utilized as matrices to immobilize bimetallic nickel-iron nanoparticles in order to minimize aggregation and environmental leakage risks of nZVI and to enhance their reactivity. Elemental distribution mapping showed that iron particles distributed uniformly on the surface of the resin and nickel particles were dispersed homogeneously into Fe phase. The reaction rate of resin-bound nZVI is about 55% higher than that of dispersed nZVI. The immobilized bimetallic nanoparticles with 9.69% Ni had the highest debromination percent (96%) and reaction rate (0.493 1/h). The existence of Ni significantly improved the debromination rate, due to the surface coverage of catalytic metal on the reductive metal and the formation of a galvanic cell. The environmental dominant congeners, such as BDE 154, 153, 100, 99 and 47, were produced during the process. Outstanding reactive performance, along with magnetic separation assured that resin-bound bimetallic nickel-iron nanoparticles are promising material that can be utilized to remediate a wide variety of pollutants contaminated sites including polybrominated diphenyl ethers.