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

Abstract 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.