The role of g-C3N4 in round-the-clock photocatalysis for POME

The main drawback of conventional palm oil mill effluent (POME) treatment is that the process is time and space-consuming. Besides, the treatment produces highly polluted wastewater that pollutes the environment if discharged directly. Photocatalytic process has significant potential to degrade reca...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:IOP conference series. Materials Science and Engineering 2021-04, Vol.1142 (1)
Main Authors: Razali, N A M, Salleh, W N W, Rosman, N, Ismail, H, Ahmad, S Z N, Aziz, F, Lau, W J, Ismail, A F
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Carbon nitride
Current carriers
Morphology
Palm oil
Photocatalysis
Photocatalysts
Photodegradation
Pollutants
Scanning electron microscopy
Ultraviolet reflection
Wastewater
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Summary:The main drawback of conventional palm oil mill effluent (POME) treatment is that the process is time and space-consuming. Besides, the treatment produces highly polluted wastewater that pollutes the environment if discharged directly. Photocatalytic process has significant potential to degrade recalcitrant organic pollutants and has recently attracted tremendous attention. However, current approaches mainly focus on visible light condition, which is still an ineffective treatment for POME. In this study, POME was successfully degraded using graphitic carbon nitride (g-C3N4) photocatalyst synthesised by calcination. The prepared photocatalyst was characterised by ultraviolet-visible diffuse reflectance (UV-Vis DRS) spectroscopy and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). The SEM results revealed the morphology of g-C3N4 photocatalyst. g-C3N4 could act as a visible-light-driven (VLD) photocatalyst with the highest photocatalytic efficiency of 71% under visible light. The present work highlights the potential of g-C3N4 towards the degradation of POME under visible light and dark condition. The highly enhanced photocatalytic performance is attributed to g-C3N4, but it does not work well in round-the-clock photocatalysis. However, g-C3N4 can work as the band alignment to drive separate photogenerated charge carriers, leading to effective photocatalytic degradation. g-C3N4 photocatalyst may be considered as an ideal candidate for treating POME.
ISSN:1757-8981
1757-899X
DOI:10.1088/1757-899X/1142/1/012007