Fe–N co-doped carbon derived from one-step pyrolysis modified chitosan for activating H₂O₂ to degrade organic wastewater

Fe–N co-doped carbon catalyst has drawn increasing attention in the field of Fenton-like degradation of organic wastewater due to their unique structure and high activity. In this study, Fe–N co-doped carbon catalyst with high catalytic efficiency was prepared by one-step pyrolysis modified chitosan with iron ion absorption, and their property was characterized by XRD, BET, XPS and FTIR. The results demonstrated that the Fe–N co-doped carbon catalyst (αFe@CTS-T) has abundant porous structure, surface functional groups, and unique Fe–N_x configuration, which exhibited a superior catalytic ability for degradation of RhB in H₂O₂ system, and the removal efficiency of RhB was as high as 99.5% within 30min. In addition, further mechanistic insights by contrast and quenching experiments verified that high removal efficient of RhB mainly attribute to indirect oxidation of surface-bound radicals, ¹O₂ in the H₂O₂ system, and the pathway of radical generation was proposed.