Controlled leaching with prolonged activity for Co–LDH supported catalyst during treatment of organic dyes using bicarbonate activation of hydrogen peroxide

The effluents from industries are commonly non-biodegradable and produce various hazardous intermediate products by chemical reactions that have direct impact on environment. In the present investigation, a series of Co–Mg/AL ternary LDH catalysts with fixed Mg/Al ratio were prepared by co-precipitation method. The effect of Co on the activity of the catalyst was monitored on the degradation of methylene blue (MB) as model compound at batch level using bicarbonate activation of H2O2 (BAP) system. On bench level, the best CoMgAl-4 catalyst can completely decolorize both methylene blue (MB) and methylene orange (MO) in short time, while in fixed bed, the catalyst was found stable for over 300 h with nearly 100% decolorization and excellent chemical oxygen demand (COD) removal. No leaching of Co was detected for the entire fixed experiment which may be accounted for long life stability and good activity of the catalyst. The ternary LDH catalysts were characterized by AES, XRD, FTIR, BET, and SEM for its compositional, phase structure, optical properties, textural, and surface morphology respectively. The XRD analysis confirmed characteristic pattern of hydrotalcite like structures without impurity phases. The formation of superoxide and hydroxyl radical as ROS was proposed with CoMgAl-4 by radical’s scavengers.