Abstract Hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) is the most widely used medical disinfectant product. However, the H2O2 solution synthesized by industrial anthraquinone method currently contains trace amounts of heavy metal ions and toxic organic by-products, which pose a potential threat to human life and health. In this study, we propose synthesis of super biosafety H2O2 solution without any impurity through ultrasonic cavitation from pure water saturating with inert gases. The biosafety of H2O2 solution synthesized by ultrasonic cavitation (H2O2-U) was fully confirmed to be higher than commercial H2O2 (H2O2-C) by in vitro cell and in vivo mice experiments. Computational fluid dynamic (CFD) simulation proved that the internal temperature of the argon (Ar) bubbles (710.5 K at 2.24 μs) is much higher than that of nitrogen (N2) bubbles (569.3 K at 2.26 μs). It indicated that Ar more favors the water splitting to form H2O2, according well with the experimental results. Radical experimental and hydrodynamic simulations disclose the reaction essence is that sonication induced local high temperature and pressure split pure water to •OH and •H radicals, which subsequently couples to generate H2O2 and H2. This work proposes an infusive methodology for the efficient synthesis of super biosafety H2O2 solution, and presents the first real-life applications.
Wang et al. (Wed,) studied this question.