Optimisation of CuO/AC, Fe2O3/AC synergistic multi-electrode DBD reactor for degradation of ATZ in water

Atrazine (ATZ) is a synthetic triazine herbicide and has become a new pollutant in environment water. In this study, a multi-high-voltage, double-grounded- pole dielectric barrier discharge (DBD) reactor was designed to degrade ATZ in water. The effects of different factors, such as input voltage, air flow rate, and pH, on the degradation of ATZ in the DBD reactor were compared using response surface methodology. The optimal reaction conditions for the degradation of ATZ by DBD were determined by fitting the model to the experiment: air flow rate of 100 L/h, input voltage of 32 kV and pH of 10. The degradation efficiency obtained was 97.89 %, which closely matched the simulation, indicating that the model had good correlation and consistency with the measured data. In this experiment, catalysts such as activated carbon loaded with CuO and Fe₂O₃ were added to DBD reactor to improve the utilization of active substances and enhance the degradation of ATZ. The catalysts were characterized by FT-IR, XRD, XPS and SEM, proving that they promoted the degradation of ATZ.