In last decades, drinking water unsafety has become a global problem. Although several drinking water disinfection and treatment techniques have been developed, there still exist inevitable defects, such as high energy consumption, toxic by-products, etc. Photocatalysis is a potential way to inactivate waterborne pathogens and degrade organic contaminants without secondary pollution. While most photocatalytic materials can only response to UV light (4 % in sun light). Herein, a visible-light driven photocatalytic material, AgBr-Ag-BiVO4, was prepared through selective photo-reduction and in-situ transformation process. Benefit from the facet heterojunction and Z-scheme structure, AgBr-Ag-BiVO4 exhibits higher photo-generated charge separating efficiency than BiVO4 and Ag-BiVO4. Moreover, AgBr-Ag-BiVO4 shows the highest photocatalytic bactericidal activity in inactivating E. coli K-12 (a kind of biological drinking water indicator). According to active species detecting experiments and SEM images of bacteria after reaction, it is proved that the active species (h+ and O2−) can destroy the cell wall and inactivate the bacteria. Besides inactivating pathogenic bacteria, as-prepared samples are also applied to degrade RhB (organic dye) and TC (colorless antibiotic). AgBr-Ag-BiVO4 also shows the best performance and the active species are determined as OH, h+ and O2−. After that, the photocatalytic mechanisms in bactericidal and degrading experiments were proposed.

Photocatalytic inactivating E. coli K-12 and degrading organic contaminants over AgBr-Ag-BiVO4 under visible light

2019 Spring National Meeting

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