Photocatalytic Abatement of Dyes and Drugs by Modified BiPO4 and its Biopolymeric Beads under visible light irradiation

Abstract

The present time demands clean water sources as we are facing a serious water crisis due to pollution all over the world. Industries generate an enormous quantity of wastewater through their various processes and contain complex toxic organic and inorganic contaminants. The researchers focus on developing effective and economical water treatment techniques and making the treated water suitable for reuse for domestic purposes. In water remediation, various physicochemical and biological methods are used among which photocatalysis is an attractive technique as it utilizes solar energy to activate the catalysts which are renewable and more abundant. In recent years, Bi(III) based semiconductor photocatalysts are mostly employed for organic pollutant degradation because they have good stability, non-toxic nature, economic and superior photocatalytic performance, so it concerned as superior photocatalyst. Especially BiPO4, a novel n-type non-metal oxyacid photocatalyst showed superior photocatalytic performance which is twice that of commercially used TiO2 for the degradation of methylene blue (MB) owing to the inductive effect of the phosphate group (13043-). The composite of BiPO4 with other semiconductors enhances photocatalytic performance. In this thesis, BiPO4 has been employed as the base matrix for the development of composites. The industrial applications of the synthesized photocatalysts necessitate easy separation and recovery from the wastewater which are usually not easy and impractical. Also, when it is applied in large-scale reactors it requires separation units additionally. newline