ORIGINAL PAPER The role of cobalt and copper nanoparticles on performance of magnetite-rich waste material in Fenton reaction M. H. Maleki Rizi 1 • B. Aghabarari 1 • M. Alizadeh 1 • A. Khanlarkhani 1 • M. V. Martinez Huerta 2 Received: 19 March 2017 / Revised: 12 August 2017 / Accepted: 25 September 2017 Ó Islamic Azad University (IAU) 2017 Abstract In this study, electric arc furnace dust, waste of steelmaking industry, was selected as heterogeneous Fen- ton catalysts for degradation of methylene blue solution. Co and Cu nanoparticles were added on EAF dust via impregnation method and characterized by ICP, XRF, XRD, BET, FESEM and HRTEM techniques. The Co/EAF catalyst displayed the best activity in removing high con- centrated methylene blue solution (50 mg L -1 ) with initial pH, where decolorization was measured as response. Fur- thermore, response surface methodology with central composite design was applied to evaluate the effects of initial pH, catalyst dosage, the molar ratio of H 2 O 2 to MB and their interactive effect. According to ANOVA results, quadratic model was suggested as a significant model. This statistical technique revealed that the low-cost and mag- netic recyclable Co/EAF heterogeneous Fenton catalyst had suitable catalytic activity in different reaction condi- tions and able to remove methylene blue completely. Finally, we studied the catalytic activity of Co/EAF as the best catalyst, in dye removing from textile factory wastewater. Keywords Advanced oxidation reaction Á Modified electric arc furnace dust Á Recyclable heterogeneous nanocatalyst Á Response surface methodology Introduction Treatment of wastewaters carrying recalcitrant contami- nants has been major issues in the past decades. Recalci- trant compounds present high molecular weight and hydrophobic nature and are usually found in agricultural and industrial wastewaters. A great number of industrial activities are identified for generating recalcitrant wastewater including from printing, dyeing and textile industry effluents (Oller et al. 2011; Rahim Pouran et al. 2014). These contaminants include toxic synthetic aromatic compounds such as benzene, phenol, anilines or chlorophenols, among other, which are resistant to biodegradation. Those streams must be treated as inex- pensively as possible in a safe and environmentally friendly manner (Rahim Pouran et al. 2014). For a com- plete degradation of these compounds, classical and con- ventional processes like biological treatments are not efficient and only degrade wastewater partially which produce contaminated intermediates and sludge. Therefore, the development of new and effective techniques is nec- essary (Martins et al. 2013). Advanced oxidation processes (AOPs) are considered a highly competitive water treat- ment technology for the removal of those organic pollu- tants not treatable by conventional techniques due to their high chemical stability and/or low biodegradability (Munoz et al. 2015). These processes operate at near ambient temperature and pressure involving the generation of hydroxyl radicals in sufficient quantity to allow oxi- dizing the organic pollutants to carbon dioxide, water and (if the pollutant contains heteroatoms) mineral acids (Munoz et al. 2015; Dias et al. 2016). Attending to the way of generating hydroxyl radicals, the AOPs are usually classified as chemical, electro-chemical, sono-chemical and photochemical processes. Among them, the chemical Editorial responsibility: M. Abbaspour. & B. Aghabarari b.aghabarari@merc.ac.ir 1 Department of Nanotechnology and Advanced Material, Materials and Energy Research Center (MERC), PO box 14155-4777, Tehran, Iran 2 Institute of Catalysts and Petroleochemistry, CSIC, Marie Curie 2, 28049 Madrid, Spain 123 Int. J. Environ. Sci. Technol. DOI 10.1007/s13762-017-1579-5