Speaker
Description
Nowadays, providing access to clean and safe drinking water supply especially in the developing parts of the world must be one of the most important necessities of our modern society. Indeed, the widespread use of organic dyes, pesticides, antibiotics, phenols and other organic compounds in our daily life including industrial, scientific, medical, domestic and agricultural applications has accelerated their distribution into indoor and outdoor environments. In recent years, photocatalysis has shown great promise to manage water pollution using sunlight as a cheap, green and renewable energy source compared to traditional approaches [1][2]. Semiconductors based photocatalysts, particularly titanium dioxide (TiO2) is regarded as one of the most commonly used semiconducting materials for water-pollutant decomposition [3]. However, pure TiO2 suffers from some limitations, such as poor visible light absorption ability and fast charge recombination rate [4]. In this study, we report the preparation and photocatalytic application of a new 3D flower-like Bi2WO6 microspheres supported on chitosan hydrogel beads. The surface morphology, elemental composition, crystal structure and light absorption properties of the obtained photocatalysts were comprehensively examined by scanning electron microscopy (SEM), energy dispersive spectroscopy (EDS), Fourier Transform Infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), X-ray diffraction (XRD) and Uv-vis diffuse reflectance spectroscopy (DRS). The performance of the prepared materials have been evaluated in the photodegradation of Rhodamine B and ciprofloxacin, as well as 4-nitrophenol reduction. The photostability of the prepared materials has been evaluated by recycling experiments. Thus, a good reusability of the photocatalyst has been observed in many successive catalytic runs.
