Facile preparation of Cu-Mn/CeO sub(2)/SBA-15 catalysts using ceria as an auxiliary for advanced oxidation processes

A facile synthetic method was adopted to prepare heterogeneous catalysts using ordered mesoporous silica SBA-15 as matrix, ceria as auxiliary and Cu-Mn as the catalytic active sites, denoted as Cu-Mn/CeO sub(2)/SBA-15. Characterization results demonstrate that the metal oxide nanoparticles are well-dispersed inside the mesopores rather than aggregated outside the surface. The particle sizes range from 4.1 to 11.2 nm with an increase in calcination temperature from 300 to 500 degree C. The presence of ceria plays a significant role in the formation of well-dispersed metal oxide nanoparticles, and a possible mechanism for the preparation of this heterogeneous catalyst is proposed based on comparable experimental results. Catalytic degradation studies for advanced oxidation processes (AOPs) show that Cu-Mn/CeO sub(2)/SBA-15 catalysts can efficiently degrade (>99%) high-concentration dye pollutants (C= 2 g L super(-1)) within 210 min at 70 degree C and can retain a good degradation efficiency even at a pH value of 7 when using Rhodamine B as the model pollutant. The excellent AOP catalytic performance could be ascribed to the well-dispersed catalytic nanoparticles inside the mesopores and the catalytic synergic effect of CeO sub(2). Our work here displays a simple method to synthesize heterogeneous catalyst with well-dispersed nano-sized catalytic active sites for AOPs by using CeO sub(2) as the auxiliary agent.