Degradation of pollutants in water by Fenton-like oxidation over LaFe-catalysts: Optimization by experimental design

The effect of different parameters such as temperature, type of catalyst and hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) concentration on the degradation of pollutants in water by Fenton-like oxidation was studied by using the Box-Behnken design (BBD), an effective statistical model to design the experiments. Concerning the heterogeneous catalysts, three bimetallic catalysts with lanthanum (La) and iron (Fe) ion-exchanged into zeolites (NaY and ZSM5) and a natural clay from Morocco were prepared and used for Fenton-like oxidation of organic pollutants in water. Tartrazine (Tar, a food coloring compound known as E102) and caffeine (Caf, a stimulant drug present in popular beverages such as coffee and tea) were selected as pollutants due to their presence in several commercial products for daily consumption. The BBD model indicated that the optimum catalytic conditions for Fenton-like reaction with an initial pollutant concentration of 30 ppm at pH 3.0 were T = 40 ºC and 90 mM of H2O2. The maximum conversion values achieved with the best catalyst, LaFeZSM5, were 96.6% for Tar after 180 min and 51.0% for Caf after 300 min of reaction. To increase the conversion of Caf, a modified zeolite electrode was used for electro Fenton-like oxidation without H2O2, at room temperature.