Catalytic degradation of Acid Orange 7 by manganese oxide octahedral molecular sieves with peroxymonosulfate under visible light irradiation

Highlights: • OMS-2/PMS/Vis system could efficiently catalyze the degradation of organic dyes. • The system showed much higher activity than that of OMS-2/PMS and OMS-2/Vis. • The OMS-2 catalyst exhibited stable performance for multiple runs. • Sulfate radicals were suggested to be the major reactive species in the system. • The radicals production might involve the redox cycle of Mn(IV)/Mn(III) and Mn(III)/Mn(II). - Abstract: In this paper, the photodegradation of Acid Orange 7 (AO7) in aqueous solutions with peroxymonosulfate (PMS) was studied with manganese oxide octahedral molecular sieves (OMS-2) as the catalyst. The activities of different systems including OMS-2 under visible light irradiation (OMS-2/Vis), OMS-2/PMS and OMS-2/PMS/Vis were evaluated. It was found that the efficiency of OMS-2/PMS was much higher than that of OMS-2/Vis and could be further enhanced by visible light irradiation. The catalyst also exhibited stable performance for multiple runs. Results from ESR and XPS analyses suggested that the highly catalytic activity of the OMS-2/PMS/Vis system possible involved the activation of PMS to sulfate radicals meditated by the redox pair of Mn(IV)/Mn(III) and Mn(III)/Mn(II), while in the OMS-2/PMS system, only the redox reaction between Mn(IV)/Mn(III) occurred. Several operational parameters, such as dye concentration, catalyst load, PMS concentration and solution pH, affected the degradation of AO7