Synthesis of super-biosafety hydrogen peroxide solution by ultrasonic cavitation.

Hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) is the most widely used medical disinfectant product. However, the H2O2 solution synthesized by the industrial anthraquinone method currently contains trace amounts of heavy metal ions and toxic organic by-products, which pose a potential threat to human life and health. In this study, we propose the synthesis of super-biosafety H2O2 solution without any impurity through ultrasonic cavitation from pure water saturated with inert gases. The biosafety of H2O2 solution synthesized by ultrasonic cavitation (H2O2-U) was fully confirmed to be higher than that of commercial H2O2 (H2O2-C) by in vitro cell and in vivo mouse experiments. Computational fluid dynamic (CFD) simulation proved that the internal temperature of the argon (Ar) bubbles (710.50 K at 2.24 μs) is much higher than that of nitrogen (N2) bubbles (569.30 K at 2.26 μs). It indicated that Ar more favors water splitting to form H2O2, in good agreement with the experimental results. Both radical experiment and hydrodynamic simulations disclose the reaction essence that sonication-induced local high temperature and pressure split pure water to ·OH and ·H radicals, which subsequently couple to generate H2O2 and H2. This work proposes an infusive methodology for the efficient synthesis of super biosafety H2O2 solution, and presents the first real-life applications.