Synergic mechanism of adsorption and metal-free catalysis for phenol degradation by N-doped graphene aerogel

•N-rGO aerogels exhibit promising catalytic performance for phenol.•Adsorption has an important effect on phenol catalytic degradation.•Both SO4·- and ·OH are generated in the N-RGO-A/PS system, and SO4·- plays the dominant role.•DFT calculations verify carbon atoms linked to graphitic N are most active.•The activation mechanism of persulfate relies on electron-transfer to N-rGO.

3D porous N-doped reduced graphene oxide (N-rGO) aerogels were synthesized by a hydrothermal reduction of graphene oxide (GO) with urea and following freeze-drying process. N-rGO aerogels have a high BET surface of 499.70 m2/g and a high N doping content (5.93-7.46 at%) including three kinds of N (graphitic, pyridinic and pyrrolic). Their high catalytic performance for phenol oxidation in aqueous solution was investigated by catalytic activation of persulfate (PS). We have demonstrated that N-rGO aerogels are promising metal-free catalysts for phenol removal. Kinetics studies indicate that phenol degradation follows first-order reaction kinetics with the reaction rate constant of 0.16799 min−1 for N-rGO-A(1:30). Interestingly, the comparison of direct catalytic oxidation with adsorption-catalytic oxidation experiments indicates that adsorption plays an important role in the catalytic oxidation of phenol by decreasing the phenol degradation time. Spin density and adsorption modeling demonstrates that graphitic N in N-rGO plays the most important role for the catalytic performance by inducing high positive charge densities to adjacent carbon atoms and facilitating phenol adsorption on these carbon sites. Furthermore, the activation mechanism of persulfate (PS) on N-rGO was first investigated by DFT method and PS can be activated to generate strongly oxidative radical (SO4·-) by transferring electrons to N-rGO.