2023

Chemical Engineering Journal

Journal year: 2023 | Journal volume: vol. 473

scientific article

english

EN Over the past decade, the presence of pharmaceuticals in aquatic environments has emerged as a new environmental hazard. This study aims to address this problem by developing a tailor-made photocatalytic system to degrade the antibiotic sulfamethoxazole. To accomplish this, titanium dioxide was loaded onto carbon fiber via a rapid, one-step microwave process. The impact of changes in carbon felt thickness on the synthesized photocatalysts’ morphology, surface area development, and optical properties was investigated. The carbon fiber decorated with TiO2 formed a unique photocatalyst that could be easily separated after the photo-oxidation process. It was discovered that TiO2 loading on carbon fiber could shift the excitation spectrum towards the blue region. A spectrally matched LED solution was designed to leverage this widened absorption spectrum. Photocatalytic experiments revealed that TiO2-loaded carbon fibers exhibit a high sulfamethoxazole removal efficiency, even after five successive catalytic cycles. The high photocatalytic efficiency was due to the separation of photoinduced charge carriers and the matching of the LED light source to the photocatalyst’s optical properties. Ultimately, the study demonstrated that combining TiO2-loaded carbon fiber photocatalysts with a spectra-matching tailor-made LED source resulted in a low electrical energy per order (EEO).

03.08.2023

145168-1 - 145168-13

10.1016/j.cej.2023.145168

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cej.2023.145168

Article number: 145168

200

13,3