In situ preparation of carbon-based Cu-Fe oxide nanoparticles from CuFe Prussian blue analogues for the photo-assisted heterogeneous peroxymonosulfate activation process to remove lomefloxacin

In this study, carbon-based Cu-Fe oxide (CuFeO@C) was prepared from a Prussian blue analogue (PBA), which exhibited high peroxymonosulfate (PMS) activation performance for lomefloxacin (LOM) degradation under UV-visible light (UV-vis) irradiation. Furthermore, the high catalytic activity and applicability of CuFeO@C was discussed by numerous controlled trials and several operational parameters. In fact, CuFeO@C/PMS/UV-vis reaction system not only achieved the superior LOM removal and mineralization performance under simple reaction conditions, but also exhibited excellent reusability. Moreover, the dominant reactive oxide species roles were determined via EPR measurement method and radical capture experiments. The transformed property of photogenerated electrons and transition metal redox cycling during the UV-vis assisted PMS activation process was identified via photoelectrocatalytic detection and XPS analysis. Correspondingly, a possible reaction mechanism and pathway of LOM degradation were proposed. Herein, the high-efficiency CuFeO@C was developed as the photo-PMS activation catalysts for in-depth investigation of the heterogeneous sulfate-based advanced oxidation reaction mechanism.