Resource utilization of bovine bone to prepare biochar as persulfate activator for phenol degradation

Designing non-metallic catalyst as persulfate (PS) activator for effective organic pollutants degradation in water is challenging. Herein, bovine-derived bone chars (BBCs) were prepared with different temperatures (300, 500 and 700 degrees C), which contained ordered mesoporous structures, thus realizing great phenol uptake (149.84 mg/g) with 100% degradation in combination with PS within 180 min. Furthermore, both reactive species (SO4 center dot-; center dot OH, O-2(center dot-) and O-1(2)) and electron transfer process contributed to phenol removal due to the abundant defects and functional groups on BBC700. Owing to the multiples mechanisms, the BBC700/PS system exhibited an excellent phenol mineralization rate of 89.6 +/- 1.85%, accompanied by strong anti-jamming capacity to relatively extensive pH range (3.0-7.0), various co-existing constituents and water bodies. Additionally, DFT calculations and GC-MS were used to illustrate the 7 kinds of degradation intermediates and the overall toxicity was efficiently alleviated, thus proposing a tailored non-metallic catalyst with great potential in water purification.