Cellulose Nanocrystals Assembled on the Fe3O4Surface as Precursor to Prepare Interfaced C/Fe3O4Composites for the Oxidation of Aqueous Sulfide

• Autor(a) principal: Cunha,Igor T.
• Data de Publicação: 2016
• Outros Autores: Teixeira,Ivo F., Mesquita,João P., Ardisson,José D., Binatti,Ildefonso, Pereira,Fabiano V., Lago,Rochel M.
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Journal of the Brazilian Chemical Society (Online)
• Texto Completo: http://old.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0103-50532016000200363
• topic: magnetite; cellulose nanocrystal; whisker; sulfide oxidation; polysulfide

In this work, composites based on carbon (1, 10 and 20 wt.%) interfaced with Fe3O4 (magnetite) have been studied as catalysts for the oxidation of aqueous sulfide. The composites were prepared by assembling cellulose nanocrystals surrounding Fe3O4 followed by a controlled thermal decomposition at 400, 600 and 800 ºC. Mössbauer, X-ray diffractometry (XRD), Raman, thermogravimetry (TG), elemental analysis CHN, scanning electron microscopy (SEM/EDS), Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) and potentiometric titration indicated that at 400 and 600 ºC the cellulose nanocrystals decompose to different carbon forms, i.e., films, filaments and particles attached to the Fe3O4 crystals. At higher temperature, i.e., 800 ºC, this carbon on the magnetite surface further reacted to produce Fe0. UV-Vis, Raman and electrospray ionization mass spectrometry (ESI-MS) measurements showed that these composites catalyze the oxidation of aqueous sulfide to convert S2-aq to polysulfides Sn2- (where n = 2-9) and also oxygen containing polysulfides HOSn-. Simple kinetic experiments showed very low sulfide oxidation activities for pure Fe3O4 and pure carbon. On the other hand, the composites, especially with 10% C obtained at 600 ºC, were remarkably active. These results are discussed in terms of a possible participation of oxygen based redox groups present on the carbon surface and an electron transfer from the carbon to the Fe3O4 phase.