Activation persulfate for efficient tetrabromobisphenol A degradation via carbon-based materials: synergistic mechanism of doped N and Fe

In this study, a novel carbon-based material (Fe-N-PGWBC) utilizing the garden waste, melamine and FeSO as the precursor was successfully synthesized, efficiently activating peroxydisulfate (PDS) to degrade tetrabromobisphenol A (TBBPA). Under typical conditions (Fe-N-PGWBC dose of 100 mg·L, PDS of 0.2 mM and TBBPA of 10 mg·L), Fe-N-PGWBC/PDS system could achieve over 99% TBBPA removal (including adsorption and degradation) within 60 min, and the corresponding rate constant k was 0.0724 min, which was almost 40.2 times higher than that of the pristine biochar. The extraction experiments implied that the excellent adsorption performance of Fe-N-PGWBC did not hinder the degradation of TBBPA. Abundant active sites (rich oxygen-containing functional groups, Fe-O and FeC) of Fe-N-PGWBC could effectively promote PDS decomposition to produce reactive oxygen species. The probe-based kinetic modelling methods verified that approximately 87.6% TBBPA was degraded by SO, 12.2% TBBPA was degraded by O, and 0.2% TBBPA was degraded by OH. Furthermore, based on the calculation of density functional theory and identification of products, TBBPA was mainly involved in three transformation pathways including hydroxylation, debromination and β-scission process. The study proposed a facile resource approach of garden waste and provided deeper understanding for the TBBPA degradation mechanisms in heterogeneous system.