Photocatalysis has emerged as an efficient, environmentally benign and economically affordable technology for remediation of environmental pollutants. Semiconducting metal oxides are widely applied categories of heterogeneous catalysts, and their ability to generate charge carriers upon irradiation of light of certain energy/wavelengths makes them to serve as photocatalysts. In this work, Ce doped CuMgAl-mixed metal oxides having different proportion of cerium were synthesized by a simple co-precipitation method. The surface area (~138 m2/g) and visible light absorption capacity of the prepared catalysts are significantly high. All the Ce doped samples exhibit higher photocatalytic activity in comparison to the undoped sample on degradation of a model organic pollutant, 2,4-dichlorophenol (2,4-DCP). Here, the presence of Ce4+/Ce3+ redox cycle mainly facilitates the separation of photogenerated electrons and holes, which intern increases their performance. Among the prepared samples, 1.0 wt% Ce doped catalyst exhibited complete degradation of 2,4-DCP with a high rate constant (k = 0.0116 min-1), which is 2.9 times higher than that of the undoped catalyst (k = 0.0040 min-1) under the visible light. Control studies were carried out in the presence of light, oxygen, and scavengers of reactive oxygen species (ROS) along with kinetic experiments to learn plausible photocatalytic pathways and the mechanism.

Synthesis of cerium doped CuMgAl mixed metal oxides and utilizing their properties for enhanced visible light photocatalysis

256th National Meeting (2018)

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