Single‐atom Rh catalysts for efficiently degrading Rhodamine B with high concentration
Shouyao Hu, Jianping Guan, Runze Ma, Yu Tao, Donghao Liu, Jiaxin Gong, Yu Xiong
Abstract
Highly concentrated dye wastewater has a serious effect on the quality of natural waters; thus, developing novel catalysts to degrade dyes rapidly and efficiently is of great significance. For the first time, this study reports an Rh single atom loaded on a nitrogen‐doped carbon (SA‐Rh/CN) catalyst. This catalyst exhibits an excellent processing capacity for high concentrations of Rhodamine B (RhB), high catalytic activity (95.7% degradation of RhB in 60 min) and excellent stability (93.5% degradation efficiency after 10 stable runs), all over a wide range of pH values (effective from pH 3 to 9), for the degradation of RhB. Using free radical capture experiments, SA‐Rh/CN was confirmed to catalyse peroxymonosulphate to produce SO 4 · − and ·OH, which played important roles in the degradation of RhB. When SA‐Rh/CN was generalised for the catalytic degradation of methylene blue, it also achieved excellent performance. Therefore, this study widens the applications of single‐atom catalysts for Fenton‐like reactions and demonstrates the potential of single‐atom Rh catalysts in wastewater treatment.