Study of the Oxidation of Phenol in the Presence of a Magnetic Composite Catalyst CoFe₂O₄/Polyvinylpyrrolidone

Abstract

The development of new catalytic systems based on cobalt and iron compounds for the production of oxygen-containing compounds is an urgent task of chemical technology. The purpose of this work is the synthesis of CoFe2O4 stabilized with polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP), the study of the catalyst by physico-chemical research methods, and the determination of the effectiveness of the CoFe2O4/PVP catalyst in the phenol oxidation reaction. In this work, magnetic composites CoFe2O4 and CoFe2O4 stabilized with polyvinylpyrrolidone were synthesized by co-deposition. A comparison of the characteristics of the properties of the synthesized cobalt (II) ferrite (CoFe2O4) and the composite material CoFe2O4/PVP based on it is carried out. The obtained samples were examined using X-ray phase analysis (XRD), the Debye–Scherrer method, scanning electron microscopy (SEM), Mossbauer and IR Fourier spectroscopy, as well as thermogravimetric analysis (TGA). The textural properties were determined based on the analysis of nitrogen isotherms. The catalytic properties of the synthesized materials in the process of phenol oxidation in the presence of hydrogen peroxide are considered. The analysis of the reaction mixtures by HPLC obtained by the oxidation of phenol in the presence of a CoFe2O4/PVP catalyst showed a decrease in the concentration of phenol in the first 15 min of the process (by 55–60%), and then within 30 min, the concentration of phenol decreased to 21.83%. After 2 h of the process, the conversion of phenol was already more than 95%. The final sample after the reaction contained 28% hydroquinone and 50% benzoquinone. It was found that the synthesized magnetic composites exhibit catalytic activity in this process.

Keywords

• phenol
• cobalt ferrite
• magnetic composites
• polyvinylpyrrolidone
• oxidation