Dual Hydrogen Donor‐Mediated Reduction of Nitroarenes Over a Magnetically Recoverable CoFe ₂ O ₄ @GO Nanocomposite: Mechanistic and Kinetic Insights

ABSTRACT

Developing high‐performance and sustainable catalytic systems for reduction of nitroaromatics remains an important objective in both environmental remediation and synthetic chemistry. We report herein a CoFe ₂ O ₄ @GO catalytic system synthesized using co‐precipitation method as a magnetically recoverable heterogeneous catalytic system for the selective reduction of nitroarenes into corresponding amines using sodium borohydride and hydrazine hydrate as reducing agents. The NaBH ₄ ‐mediated reduction using CoFe ₂ O ₄ @GO exhibits effective reduction capacity with 81.91% and 97.98% reduction efficiencies for 2‐nitrophenol (2‐NP) and 2,4,6‐trinitrophenol (PA) respectively showing pseudo‐first order kinetics, while for the bare CoFe ₂ O ₄ catalysts, a lower reduction efficiency was observed (66.67% for 2‐NP and 90.72% for PA). Additionally, 2‐NP, Nitrobenzene and PA were also reduced using CoFe ₂ O ₄ @GO catalyst and hydrazine hydrate. Comparative investigation for both the processes demonstrates distinct mechanistic pathways for successful reduction of the nitroarenes into their respective amines. These results suggest that the CoFe ₂ O ₄ @GO nanocomposite holds significant potential for applications in wastewater treatment and industrial organic synthesis.