One emerging challenge in water reuse is the removal of chemical compounds.  Known as recalcitrant contaminants, pharmaceuticals, pesticides, and personal care products present hazards to public health and aquatic life, even in trace amounts.  Metal oxide semiconductors are potential photo-active catalysts to degrade these contaminants, but they suffer from low efficiencies or present additional complications due to nano-scopic size. By combining multiple, micron-sized, photo-active oxides we have engineered an approach to increase the degradation rate of recalcitrant contaminants in water by harvesting multiple wavelengths of light simultaneously.  Specifically, a mixed metal oxide photocatalytic material based on ZnO, Fe2O3, and CuO, that is responsive to multiple wavelengths of incident light (365, 590, 1033 nm) will be discussed. Experiments were conducted with a calibrated full spectrum light source. The mixed metal oxide photocatalytic material exhibits synergistic effects on the removal of a model contaminant (methyl orange); increasing the degradation rate to 80% after 1 h, as compared to 11, 44, 16% for each photo-active compound in isolation.  The extension of this work to multi-contaminant systems will be discussed.

Multi-spectral photocatalysis for improved degradation of recalcitrant contaminants from aqueous systems

254th National Meeting (2017)

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