A series of new inorganic-organic hybrid materials based on TiO2 and new biochar-based supports (biochar obtained by pyrolysis of Miscanthus Straw Pellets (MSP) and Soft Wood Pellets (SWP) at 550 and 700 oC) were successfully prepared using ultrasound-assisted methodology. The resulting composites were characterized by a wide range physicochemical techniques and investigated in water and gas phase photocatalytic test reaction. Our best composite (TiO2/SWP700) achieved phenol degradation of 64.1% (under UV light) and 33.6% (under visible light). In addition, it also showed an extraordinarily high activity (~90 %) in selective oxidation of methanol to methyl formate in flow gas phase, high selectivity to methyl formate (~80 %) and high yield of methyl formate (~88 %) after 240 minutes of illumination. It can be noticed that when TiO2 is supported on biochar, presented a superior photocatalytic ability and could be recycled at least 5 times in both photocatalytic runs tests with reproducible high photocatalytic efficiency.
Paweł Lisowski, Juan Carlos Colmenares, Ondřej Mašek, Wojciech Lisowski, Dmytro Lisovytskiy, Agnieszka Kamińska, and Dariusz Łomot. ACS Sustainable Chem. Eng., 5(7) (2017) 6274 – 6287.
https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acssuschemeng.7b01251
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