It is highly desirable to explore efficient catalysts for reducing toxic Cr to benign Cr under mild and eco-friendly conditions. This article describes a facile fabrication of nitrogen doped carbon (N@C-g-CN) as a metal-free catalyst for Cr reduction using lignin as a carbon source and g-CN nanosheets as a nitrogen source. The structural properties of the N@C-g-CN catalyst are characterized by TEM, HR-TEM, XRD, TGA, Raman, EDS-mapping, XPS and BET techniques. The summation of these analyses sheds light on the high surface area (903 m g), mesopore size (17.3 nm) and defects ( / = 0.97) of N@C-g-CN, which contribute to its excellent catalytic activity in HCOOH-mediated reduction of Cr to Cr with high rate constant (2.98 min) and turnover frequency (2.21 mol g min) and complete degradation (100%) within 5 min. The catalytic performance of the catalyst reveals that the reduction activity is significantly dependent on the concentration of Cr and HCOOH, catalyst loading, pH, temperature, and foreign ions. Particularly, the N@C-g-CN catalyst shows superior stability and renewability with little loss of activity (≥95%) after 8 months storage and five repeated uses. Furthermore, N@C-g-CN can be applied in other hydrogenation reactions involving K[Fe(CN)], 4-NP and BPA using NaBH as a hydrogen donor, and the removal of organic dyes. These findings illustrate that N@C-g-CN as a metal-free catalyst is effective, versatile and eco-friendly for the reduction of Cr from contaminated environments.
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http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8981140 | PMC |
http://dx.doi.org/10.1039/d1ra06391j | DOI Listing |
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