Simultaneous Photocatalytic Wastewater Treatment and H2 Generation

Abstract

A solution to the world's energy dilemma is the use of hydrogen as an energy carrier. Technologies that are environment friendly, simple, and cost effective are studied to produce hydrogen. Water splitting is an important element in the process of hydrogen generation; however, the world is suffering from water scarcity. Thus, other water sources must be utilized in hydrogen generation processes. The huge amount of wastewater produced from industries can be used, ensuring the sustainability of the process. A real wastewater that consists of Cu2+, Ni2+, Cd2+, Zn2+, Fe3+ as heavy metals, along with the addition of the organic pollutant butyric acid is utilized in this study. The performance of the photocatalytic hydrogen generation from the aforementioned wastewater solution is analyzed. Both redox reactions undergo useful conversions, leading to a dual-functional process. The viability of simultaneous water treatment and hydrogen generation is presented in the proposed mechanism. The amount of hydrogen produced from De-Iionized water was higher than from wastewater solution, this is due to the presence of heavy metals. Heavy metals competed with protons for the reduction reaction. Heavy metal removal by adsorption, direct or indirect photoreduction were proposed. Butyric acid acted as a hole trapper, enhancing the photocatalytic efficiency. Pt/TiO2 was used as a photocatalyst, the band gap and band gap edges were calculated from the reflectance data.

Date of Award	Aug 2023
Original language	American English
Supervisor	Faisal Al Marzooqi (Supervisor)