Phenol Absorption on functionalized Fe-C nanocomposites for water cleaning

Functional Fe-C core-shell nanostructured platforms have been designed for adsorption of phenol in contaminated water. The synthesized magnetic nanocomposites are inserted in an aqueous solution containing phenol. The phenol content of the contaminated water has been checked as a function of time and a complete removal is observed in the first cycle. Nevertheless, the efficiency reduces in the subsequent cycles. The actual proposal pretend to determine the vibrational spectra of the platform in different cycling states in order to detect phenol moleculeplatform chemical interactions and try to correlate the surface interactions with the loss of recyclability. In contrast to the preliminary FTIR analysis, Inelastic Neutron Scattering (INS) is not subject to any optical selection rules and all vibrations are measurable. Besides INS is mainly sensitive to vibrations involving hydrogen atoms and their vibrational dynamic, can be theoretically predicted. Therefore, the aim of this proposal is to shed some light on the phenol absorption process. Seven different samples will be measured at TOSCA, at base temperature of 10K; two days of beamtime are requested.