Research Article Rice Husk Supported Catalysts for Degradation of Chlorobenzenes in Capillary Microreactor Abdulelah Thabet, Chanbasha Basheer, Than Htun Maung, Hasan Ali Al-Muallem, and Abdul Nasar Kalanthoden Department of Chemistry, King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals, Dhahran 31261, Saudi Arabia Correspondence should be addressed to Chanbasha Basheer; cbasheer@kfupm.edu.sa Received 16 January 2015; Revised 21 May 2015; Accepted 4 June 2015 Academic Editor: Maofeng Zhang Copyright © 2015 Abdulelah habet et al. his is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Chlorinated organic pollutants are persistent, toxic, and ubiquitously distributed environmental contaminants. hese compounds are highly bioaccumulative and adversely afect the ozone layer in the atmosphere. As such, their widespread usage is a major cause of environmental and health concern. herefore, it is important to detoxify such compounds by environment friendly methods. In this work, rice husk supported platinum (RHA-Pt) and titanium (RHA-Ti) catalysts were used, for the irst time, to investigate the detoxiication of chlorobenzenes in a glass capillary microreactor. High potential (in kV range) was applied to a reaction mixture containing bufer solution in the presence of catalyst. Due to high potential, hydroxyl and hydrogen radicals were produced, and the reaction was monitored by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry. he main advantage of this capillary reactor is the in situ generation of hydrogen for the detoxiication of chlorobenzene. Various experimental conditions inluencing detoxiication were optimized. Reaction performance of capillary microreactor was compared with conventional catalysis. Only 20 min is suicient to completely detoxify chlorobenzene in capillary microreactor compared to 24 h reaction time in conventional catalytic method. he capillary microreactor is simple, easy to use, and suitable for the detoxiication of a wide range of chlorinated organic pollutants. 1. Introduction Chlorinated organic compounds (COCs) are a large class of synthetic and natural organic molecules that contain one or more chlorine atoms. hey are one of the most versatile and widely used classes of compounds in the industrial world [1]. For example, COCs are used as anesthetics, pesticides and herbicides, fungicides, dyes, pharmaceuticals, plant growth regulators, heat-transfer medium, and industrial solvents and are byproducts of several industries (e.g., oil reining, paper industry, plastics or adhesives manufacturing, etc.) [1–6]. he importance of these chlorinated chemicals lies in the fact that chlorine bonds strongly to other elements, and this makes chlorine an important ingredient and precursor in building new compounds. Unfortunately, this property is also one of the reasons why chlorinated compounds, once formed, are hazardous. Due to this strong bonding, it is hard to break down COCs and hence they persist in nature. Chlorine- containing compounds also adversely afect the ozone layer in the atmosphere. As such, their widespread usage is a major cause of environmental and health concern. Moreover, COCs are among the most widely distributed pollutants in wastew- aters and contaminated ground waters [7]. hey are listed as priority pollutant by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) [8]. Due to their lipophilic nature (i.e., easy to concentrate in fats of animals, which leads to biomag- niication), polychlorinated aromatic compounds which are environmentally stable and persistent in nature tend to bioac- cumulate in the food chain [9]. Bioaccumulation indirectly afects human as residues of these compound are detected in food and human adipose tissues, milk, and serum fat [10]. COCs can cause serious environmental problems because they are diicult to be decomposed biologically. Exposure to them can lead to kidney, liver, blood, and central nervous system damages. herefore, there is an urgent need to develop eicient and cost-efective methods to detoxify and destroy them [11]. Several remediation methods have been developed to eliminate COCs, such as oxidation methods and incin- eration [12, 13]; mechanochemical methods and reductive Hindawi Publishing Corporation Journal of Nanomaterials Article ID 912036