Preparation of metal organic frame derived MgO-porous carbon composite and its high catalytic activity in ozonation with excellent stability

Ozone-based advanced oxidation technology has been extensively studied so far, but is hardly successfully used in treating actual wastewater. Preparation of a catalyst with high activity and stability, and insensitivity to quencher is still a big challenge in this field. The calcination of MOF-74 in inert gas resulted in a composite of the MgO-porous carbon, in which 2 nm MgO nanoparticles were uniformly distributed in porous carbon. The specific surface area of MgO-PC composite (531.16 m²/g) was about 15 times that of MgO. The results of MgO-PC catalytic ozonation indicated it had not only high activity in ozonation of different organic but also excellent stability. The constant rate of p-CBA degradation in O3/MgO-PC only decreased from 11.63 × 10−2 min−1 to 9.36 × 10−2 min−1 after consecutive 15 cycles of the catalyst owing to the coating of porous carbon on nano particles of MgO. The most important thing is that O3/MgO-PC is a little insensitive to the free radical quenchers, which is an amazing result in progress of heterogeneous catalytic ozonation.