Vol.:(0123456789) 1 3 Catal Lett DOI 10.1007/s10562-017-2054-0 New Co(II) and Cu(II) Phthalocyanine Catalysts Reinforced by Long Alkyl Chains for the Degradation of Organic Pollutants Ece Tugba Saka 1  · Yasemin Çağlar 2   Received: 29 December 2016 / Accepted: 9 April 2017 © Springer Science+Business Media New York 2017 Keywords Phthalocyanine · Cobalt · Copper · Organic pollutants · Degradation 1 Introduction Environmental problems are normally recounted to waste and toxic organic with inorganic pollutants released in water bodies. The majority of the coloured and uncoloured efuents originated in contaminated waters contain organic dyes and phenolic compounds from textiles, dyestuf, dye- ing industries, fertilizers and chemical production indus- tries [1–3]. Phenolic compounds are a major class of envi- ronmental pollutants and are potential human carcinogens. They are widely used in the manufacturing processes of plastics, dyes, drugs, pesticides and papers. Their disposal may contaminate soil and water. Because of increasing public health concerns and stricter regulations on treatment and disposal, it becomes more important to develop newer and efcient methods for removing these compounds from wastewaters [4–8] The reported methods for removing phe- nolics from wastewaters include activated carbon adsorp- tion [9], microbial degradation [10], chemical oxidation [11], corona discharge [12], enzymatic degradation [13], etc. The toxic and bio-resistant organo chlorine compounds in aqueous systems need to be transformed into harmless species. Various abatement techniques including biologi- cal, thermal and chemical treatments have been developed in the last few years for the detoxifcation of organic pol- lutants [14]. Metallophthalocyanines (MPc) are very sta- ble metal complexes of macrocyclic tetraazaporphyrin. Thanks to their chemical and thermal stability, low cost, easy preparation, metallophthalocyanines have found many applications in medical and industrial areas such as gas and chemical sensors, molecular solar cells, industrial catalytic Abstract The need to develop sustainable, low-cost, earth abundant catalyst is becoming paramount for overcoming environmental problems. Toward this goal, new cobalt(II) and copper(II) phthalocyanine complexes used as catalyst for degradation of organic pollutants (such as 2,3-dichlo- rophenol, 4-methoxyphenol, 4-nitrophenol, 2,3,6-trimeth- ylphenol) with diferent oxygen source. This catalytic sys- tem with these complexes showed high conversion rates for degradation of organic pollutants and could easily be recovered by recycling reactions. Graphical Abstract Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s10562-017-2054-0) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Ece Tugba Saka ece_t_saka@hotmail.com 1 Department of Chemistry, Faculty of Sciences, Karadeniz Technical University, 61080 Trabzon, Turkey 2 Department of Bioengineering, Faculty of Engineering, Giresun University, 28200 Giresun, Turkey