Swift reduction of nitroaromatics by gold nanoparticles anchored on steam-activated carbon black via simple preparation

Abstract

Gold (Au) nanoparticles supported on certain platforms display highly e cient activity on nitroaromatics reduction. In this study, steam-activated carbon black (SCB) was used as a platform to fabricate Au/SCB catalysts via a green and simple method for 4nitrophenol (4-NP) reduction. The obtained Au/SCB catalysts exhibit e cient catalytic performance in reduction of 4-NP (rate constant k app = 2.1925 min -1 ). The effects of SCB activated under different steam temperature, Au loading amount, pH and reaction temperature were studied. The structural advantages of SCB as a platform were analyzed by various characterizations. Especially, the result of N 2 adsorption-desorption method showed that steam activating process could bring higher surface area (from 185.9689 m²/g to 249.0053 m²/g), larger pore volume (from 0.073268 cm³/g to 0.165246 cm³/g) and more micropore for SCB when compared with initial CB, demonstrating the suitable of SCB for Au NPs anchoring, thus promoting the catalytic activity. This work contributes to the fabrication of other supported metal nanoparticle catalysts for preparing different functional nanocomposites for different applications.