Development of Zn doping Fe‐Pd bifunctional mesh‐type catalyst for heterogeneous electro‐Fenton system

The Fe‐Pd bifunctional heterogeneous electro‐Fenton catalyst is an attractive option for the degradation of phenol wastewater. However, the catalyst faces issues such as inadequate yield of H 2 O 2 on the Pd species and poor durability. In this study, we developed a bifunctional Fe‐Pd catalyst with Zn embedded into a mesh‐type γ‐Al 2 O 3 /Al support (Zn x FePd/γ‐Al 2 O 3 /Al). The characterization results indicate that the addition of Zn can improve the dispersion of the Pd component on the catalyst surface and promote the crystallization of Fe 3 O 4 . Density functional theory calculations reveal that Zn doping reduces the activation energy of the rate‐controlled step and promotes the desorption of products and intermediates in H 2 O 2 synthesis. The reaction kinetics model was proposed. Furtherly, a possible reaction mechanism was proposed to explain the phenol degradation pathways. The selected Zn 1.4 FePd/γ‐Al 2 O 3 /Al catalyst achieved a degradation rate of 98.8% for phenol. The degradation rate remained above 85% after seven cycles.