Heterogeneous sonocatalytic degradation of Bisphenol-A and the influence of the reaction parameters and ultrasonic frequency

In the present study, the sonocatalytic oxidation of Bisphenol-A (BPA) was investigated in the presence of a LaFeO₃ perovskite catalyst. The effects of the reaction temperature, initial pH, catalyst loading, presence of inorganic anions and sonication source (power and frequency) on the removal of BPA using heterogeneous sonocatalytic process were investigated. Under the studied temperature range of 288–318 K, 308 K was selected as the optimum temperature and the highest BPA removal and total oxygen demand (TOC) reduction of, 95.8% and 30.4% were achieved at that temperature. The thermodynamic parameters were calculated in the studied temperature range of 288–308 K. It was seen that an acidic pH of 3.0 was favorable for the BPA oxidation with the highest BPA removal and TOC reduction of 95.4% and 31.5%, respectively. Doubling the catalyst amount from 0.25 g/L to 0.5 g/L increased the BPA removal degree from 81.6% to 90.8%. However, further increase in catalyst amount has no remarkable positive effect on the removal of BPA. The removal of BPA was described by the first order kinetics with an activation energy of 14.9 kJ/mol. The results obtained from this study showed that the LaFeO₃ perovskite catalyst was a good sonocatalyst giving high oxidation rates of BPA.