Facile reduction of para-nitrophenols: catalytic efficiency of silver nanoferns in batch and continuous flow reactors

Alok Kumar Srivastava, Kunal Mondal, Kingsuk Mukhopadhyay, N. Eswara Prasad, Ashutosh Sharma

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

15 Scopus citations

Abstract

The catalytic efficiency of silver-nanoferns (Ag-NFs) decorated on carbon microfiber surfaces has been investigated. The Ag-NFs were grown on carbon microfibers employing electrodeposition technique using an electrolytic solution of aqueous silver nitrate and boric acid. The structure of grown Ag-NFs has nanoscaled sub-branches of sizes ≤50 nm that could be controlled by applied voltage and electrodeposition time. Using a specially designed home-made glass reactor, the catalytic efficiency of the Ag-NFs grown over carbon microfibers (cAg-NF) has been measured and tested for a model catalytic reaction of para-nitrophenol reduction mediated by sodium borohydride, both in batch and continuous flow modes of operation. The cAg-NFs have shown excellent catalytic activity with a normalized rate constant κ = 3.42 s-1 g-1. The reusability for the cAg-NFs has been observed up to seven cycles of operation without much degradation in the catalytic efficiency. The integrated c-Ag-NF catalyst system and the designed reactors are simple and can be easily incorporated for facile effluent treatment or in other applications where catalytic reduction may be required.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)113981-113990
Number of pages10
JournalRSC Advances
Volume6
Issue number115
DOIs
StatePublished - 2016
Externally publishedYes

Funding

The authors are grateful to the support of Department of Science and Technology, New Delhi, India and Defence Research and Development Organisation, New Delhi, India for their support in this work.

FundersFunder number
Department of Science and Technology, New Delhi, India and Defence Research and Development Organisation

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