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Manganese-catalyzed degradation of phosphonic acids

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Abstract

The non-biodegradable and chemically very stable phosphonates are used in a variety of industrial applications including cooling waters, oil production and textile industry. We show here that they are degraded in the presence of Mn(II) and oxygen. The half-life for the reaction is 9 min near neutral pH. The presence of other cations such as Ca(II) and Zn(II) considerably slows down the reaction by competition with Mn(II) for the phosphonate. The reaction involves the oxidation of complexed Mn(II) by oxygen to Mn(III) and the subsequent oxidation of phosphonate by Mn(III) thus yielding two stable phosphonic acid breakdown products. The oxidation also proceeds in the presence of the mineral manganite (Mn(III)OOH), and yields the same breakdown products. The use of a newly developed chromatographic method revealed the presence of the breakdown products in wastewater. The results show that manganese-catalyzed oxidation might be an important pathway for phosphonate degradation in natural waters.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Reinhold-Beitlich-Foundation, Tübingen, Germany; the Huber-Kudlich-Foundation, Zürich, Switzerland; the Swiss National Science Foundation and the Novartis Foundation, Basel, Switzerland. Additional funding was provided by Grant R82–6376, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, National Center of Environmental Research and Quality Assurance (Office of Exploratory Research).

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  1. Institute of Terrestrial Ecology (ITÖ), Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zürich (ETH), CH-8952, Schlieren, Switzerland

    Bernd Nowack

  2. Department of Geography and Environmental Engineering, The Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD 21218, USA

    Alan T. Stone

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  1. Bernd Nowack
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Correspondence to Bernd Nowack.

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Nowack, B., Stone, A.T. Manganese-catalyzed degradation of phosphonic acids. Environ Chem Lett 1, 24–31 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10311-002-0014-3

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