Domestic wastewater reclamation has emerged as an effective solution for water scarcity, especially in areas suffering from lack of access to sustainable fresh water resources. However, removing micro-organic pollutants is still challenging due to the persistence of certain pollutants towards traditional treatment methods. Thus, treatment with advanced oxidation technologies as one of the unit operations is an important option for the degradation of such contaminants in wastewater. The current study intended to investigate the use our home-made nitrogen- and boron- codoped TiO2 catalysts with enhanced solar light photocatalytic properties for the degradation of pollutants of emerging concern (including Diclofenac, DCF; Bisphenol A, BPA; Estrone, E1; Triclosan, TCS; Ibuprofen, IBP) in clean water and water matrices form selected water treatment utilities. These pollutants were chosen to represent different classes of pollutants (i.e., pharmaceuticals, personal care products, hormones) mostly found in wastewater. The synthesized catalysts were characterized by several techniques including XRD, BET, SEM, EDX, TEM and HR-TEM. All doped catalysts exhibited enhanced solar light activity compared to pristine TiO2, with 12%NBT350 catalysts (synthesized @ 12% dopant content and 350 oC calcination) showed the highest light absorption @ λ&gt;400 nm. The highest photocatalytic efficiency was obtained at a catalyst dose of 0.8 g/L and pH 7.0. Removal efficiencies of DCF, E1, BPA, TCS and IBP (initial concentration of each pollutant =1 µM) solar light/12NBT-350 in clean water in 60 min were 93, 92, 85, 75 and 58%, respectively. However, these values decreased to 73, 63, 42, 20 and 15, respectively, in field water samples due to the scavenging effect of reactive radical species by the organic/inorganic constituents of wastewater.

Nitrogen- and boron- codoped TiO2 vatalyst with improved photocatalytic activity for wastewater treatment/reuse applications

256th National Meeting (2018)

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