HETEROGENEOUS PHOTOCATALYTIC OXIDATION FOR THE REMOVAL OF BISPHENOL A FROM AQUEOUS SOLUTION OVER TiO2/GRAPHENE OXIDE (GO) BASED NANOCOMPOSITESPintar, Albin (Mentor)
Bortoluzzi, Marco (Mentor)
Veternik, Ana (Avtor)
heterogeneous photocatalysistitanium dioxidegraphene oxidebisphenol ASince water is an essential substance for all life on earth, it is therefore vital to prevent its pollution and to improve wastewater purification processes. There is a vast number of pollutants which can contaminate water, of which bisphenol A (known as an endocrine disruptor) is the pollutant studied herein. In this study, several TiO2/GO based nanocomposites with various GO loadings (2, 4, 10, 20 and 40%) and differently shaped nanocrystalline TiO2 phases (titanate nanotubes (TNTs) and calcined titanate nanotubes (TNTs_500)) were synthesised. All of the nanocomposites were characterised through SEM, UV-vis-DR, TGA, BET, FT-IR and CHNS analyses and were used in the heterogeneous photocatalytic degradation of bisphenol A and compared to the activity of pure TNTs and TNT_500 photocatalysts. All TiO2/GO nanocomposites exhibit much better activity than pure TNTs and TNTs_500 catalysts. The conversion of the BPA was analysed using HPLC and the mineralisation was analysed using a TOC analysis. The best experiment was performed with TNTs_500 + 10% GO composite, which can be attributed to the TiO2 crystalline structure obtained. According to the results obtained, TiO2 + 10% GO was found to exhibit the best degradation ratio, which can be ascribed to the fact that excessive GO can act as a charge carrier recombination centre and promotes the recombination of electron-hole pairs in reduced GO.20172017-02-06 22:50:22Magistrsko delo/naloga2947COBISS_ID: 4691963NUK URN: URN:SI:UNG:REP:TRYCHOWPsl