With the rapid industrial development, the coexistence of multiple pollutants in wastewater has become a common phenomenon. Thus, developing highly efficient decontamination methods is imperative. In this work, a string of UiO-66-NH2/BiOBr heterojunctions with varying ratios of BiOBr were prepared and applied to remove hexavalent chromium Cr(VI) and rhodamine B (RhB). The possible growth process of BiOBr nanosheets on UiO-66-NH2, removal activity of contaminants, and photocatalysis mechanism were investigated. When the mass ratio of UiO-66-NH2 to BiOBr reaches 1:0.75, the heterojunction (NB-75) shows optimal photocatalytic activity. After 30 min of adsorption, the total removal rates of Cr(VI) (50 mg/L) and RhB (10 mg/L) over NB-75 (0.25 g/L) reaches 96.7% within 120 min of illumination and 98.9% within 80 min of illumination, respectively. For the removal process, there are two factors. The first is the high adsorption capacity for RhB and Cr(VI) owing to the high porosity of UiO-66-NH2 and interlayer surface positive charge of BiOBr. The second is the improved visible-light photocatalytic performance of the UiO-66-NH2/BiOBr heterojunction via rapid separation of photoinduced carriers. In addition, the active species capture study reveals that the electrons (e-) and the superoxide radicals (•O2-) play key roles in Cr(VI) reduction, while the holes (h+) are major reactive groups participating in the degradation of RhB. This work demonstrated a kind of promising MOF-based photocatalysis material for eliminating Cr(VI) and RhB simultaneously.
7 September 2016 in Journal of Polymers and the Environment
At present, the types of pollutants in wastewater are more and more complicated, however, the multifunctional membrane materials are in short supply. To prepare a membrane with both high efficient oil-in-water emulsion separation performance and photocatalytic degradation performance of organic dyes, the bifunctional separation membrane was successfully prepared by electrostatic spinning technology of PVDF/PEMA and in situ deposition of anatase TiO2 nanoparticles containing Ti3+ and oxygen vacancies (Ov). The prepared composite membrane has excellent hydrophilic properties (WCA = 15.65), underwater oleophobic properties (UOCA = 156.69), and photocatalytic performance. These composite membranes have high separation efficiency and outstanding anti-fouling performance, the oil removal efficiency reaches 98.95%, and the flux recovery rate (FRR) reaches 99.19% for soybean oil-in-water emulsion. In addition, the composite membrane has outstanding photocatalytic degradation performance, with 97% and 90.2% degradation of RhB and AG-25 under UV conditions, respectively. Several oil-in-water separation and dye degradation experiments show that the PVDF composite membrane has excellent reuse performance. Based on these results, this study opens new avenues for the preparation of multifunctional reusable membranes for the water treatment field.
25 September 2024 in ACS Applied Electronic Materials