Clean Water and Sanitation (SDG 6), Climate Action (SDG 13)
Utilization of the Caribbean’s most abundant resource to facilitate water treatment
Ahmad Mohammed* Trinidad and Tobago
Freshwater pollution is a result of human activity and originates from multiple sources such as municipal, industrial, and agricultural waste, power generation, and automobiles. Since freshwater is necessary for human prosperity it is vital that there are ways to reduce our impacts on the its sources, but also to purify those that have already been polluted. Photocatalysis as a method of water treatment can be a cost efficient, environmentally friendly, and sustainable option. The use of a photoactive semiconductor materials such as Titanium dioxide (TiO 2 ) to facilitate the oxidative removal of pollutants from wastewater, has been widely shown to be effective in contemporary research. The most prominent model experiment used to demonstrate the effectiveness of potentially photoactive materials is degradation of organic dyes such as methylene blue or methyl orange under visible or UV light irradiation. This study focuses on the use of TiO 2 based photocatalysts sporting noble metal nanoparticle surface coatings to facilitate the facile and complete degradation of methyl orange using high powered LEDs or natural sunlight under ambient condition. The improved reactivity of the TiO 2 ¬ covered by metal nanoparticles as compared to the unmodified TiO 2 when used with visible light LED source, and the change of the catalysts’ reactivity profiles when employing natural sunlight will be presented. Additionally, the co-production of molecular hydrogen from dye-water mixtures will be discussed revealing unique mechanistic details not yet reported in the literature. The use of natural sunlight as an abundant resource for dye degradation will reduce the cost needed to utilize this process since the bare catalyst is more effective than it’s more processed counterpart. Therefore, the use of sunlight is more cost effective and energy efficient than the traditional models of dye degradation which use UV light sources, thereby opening new avenues for pollution reduction research.
P14
© The Author(s), 2023
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