Fast Decontamination of Varied Organic Dye Wastewater via CuO-Assisted Peroxymonosulfate Activation as an Undergraduate Laboratory Experiment

We present the application of high-efficiency, low-cost, and facile-preparation copper oxide (CuO) nanoparticles as a laboratory experiment for the fast decontamination of organic dye wastewater through an advanced oxidation process (AOPs) for undergraduate students. The CuO nanoparticles are synthesized via a facile alkaline aqueous solution-induced precipitation originating from a transparent ethanol/water solution containing copper acetate. The density of oxygen vacancies (OVs) in CuO nanoparticles decreases with increasing water content in the synthesis system. In practice, students first synthesized two types of CuO nanomaterials with a 100% success rate, and then students observed the rapid and significant color fading at normal temperature and pressure by using two types of CuO-assisted peroxymonosulfate (PMS) activation for the oxidation of varied organic dyes (including rhodamine B (RhB), methylene blue (MB), reactive black 5 (RB5), crystal violet (CV), methyl orange (MO), and malachite green (MG)). The evaluation results of the after-class experiment show that the average score of students’ overall impression of the experiment is as high as 4.8 points (out of a full score of 5), particularly due to the vivid and rapid color change, which heightened students’ engagement and fostered a strong sense of achievement. This interdisciplinary experiment involves knowledge of catalytic chemistry, materials science, and environmental science, which is very meaningful for undergraduate students to understand the key role of OVs in catalytic materials and basic principles during AOPs. More significantly, the laboratory experiment is facile, cheap, noticeable, and fast, which is very suitable for undergraduate laboratory teaching.