Design of Nano-Catalyst for Removal of Phenolic Compounds from Wastewater by Oxidation Using Modified Digital Basket Baffle Batch Reactor: Experiments and Modeling

Removal of phenol and phenolic compounds from wastewater using various techniques has received considerable attention in recent years. In this work, the removal of phenol from a model solution of phenol via catalytic oxidation is investigated with oxidant H2O2. For this purpose, we designed a new nano-catalyst (8% Fe2O3/AC) by loading iron oxide nanoparticles over nano-activated carbon via the impregnation process. We modified the recently developed digital basket baffle batch reactor (DBBBR) and used it for the catalytic oxidation process in order to examine the activity of the prepared nano-catalyst. The highest efficiency of phenol removal was found to be 95.35% under the following parameters: oxidation time of 120 min, oxidation temperature at 85 & DEG;C, and stirrer speed of 600 rpm. The minimization of the sum of the squared error between the experimental data and predicted results of phenol removal was considered as a base for the optimization technique to estimate the optimal parameters for the kinetic process. The predicted conversion of phenol excellently agreed with the experimental results (absolute average errors < 5%) for a wide range of process parameters.

Automated summary

The removal of phenol and phenolic compounds from wastewater has been a topic of interest in recent years. This study investigated the catalytic oxidation of phenol using H2O2 as the oxidant. A new nano-catalyst (8% Fe2O3/AC) was designed by loading iron oxide nanoparticles onto nano-activated carbon. The highest efficiency of phenol removal was achieved under specific parameters, and the optimization technique successfully predicted the conversion of phenol.