Recently,the research group of Prof. Zheng Minghui from the School of Environment, Hangzhou Institute for Advanced Study, UCAS has made new progress in the research on mechanisms of generation and inhibition of persistent organic pollutants (POPs) and environmentally persistent free radicals (EPFRs).Their research findings were published in theChemical Engineering Journal under the title "Synergetic promoting/inhibiting mechanisms of copper/calcium compounds in the formation of persistent organic pollutants and environmentally persistent free radicals from anthracene".
POPs are a class of environmental pollutants with high toxicity, persistence, long-distance transport and bioaccumulation. They can be unintentionally generated and discharged in industrial production. EPFRs are a new type of environmentally harmful pollutants, with longer lifespans than transient free radicals and potential toxicity. They have also been detected in industrial flue gas and fly ash. It is of great significance to understand the generation mechanism of POPs and EPFRs for their source cooperative control.
With anthracene commonly produced and released in industrial thermal processes as a typical precursor of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), copper as a catalyst, and calcium compounds that are widely used as blockers, the researchers carried out a study on synergetic promoting/inhibiting mechanisms of POPs and EPFRs. It turns out that copper chloride can synergistically promote the formation of various POPs and EPFRs. According to electron paramagnetic resonance and identification of gas chromatography time-of-flight mass spectrometry, the main types of free radical intermediates generated are anthrone and anthraquinone free radicals. On the one hand, calcium oxide absorbed the chlorine during the reaction and prevented the substitution reaction of chlorine atoms on the aromatic hydrocarbons; on the other hand, it inhibited the generation of free radical intermediates, thus blocking the subsequent generation of POPs.
Through experiments, this study proved that calcium compounds can inhibit the formation of POPs and EPFRs synergistically, providing a new idea for the synergetic control of multiple pollutants in the actual industrial process.
Thefirst author of the paper is Lin Bingcheng, a postdoctoral fellow of the School of Environment of HIAS, and the corresponding author is Liu Guorui, a research fellow. Sun Yuxiang and Chen Changzhi, students of HIAS, also participated in part of the research work. The research was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China and the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation.
Article link:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cej.2022.136102
Source | School of Environment
Typesetter: Yu Xuan
Executive Editor | Wang Xia
Published in Zhejiang
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