Photocatalysis holds great promise as an efficient and sustainable oxidation technology for application in wastewater treatment. Rapid progress developing novel materials has propelled photocatalysis to the forefront of sustainable wastewater treatments. This review presents the latest progress on applications of photocatalytic wastewater treatment. Our focus is on strategies for improving performance. Challenges and outlooks in this promising field are also discussed. We hope this review will help researchers design low-cost and high-efficiency photocatalysts for water treatment.

Vehicle exhaust has been acknowledged as an essential factor affecting human health due to the extensive use of cars. Its main components include volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and nitrogen oxides (NOx), which can cause acute irritation and chronic diseases, and significant research on the treatment of vehicle exhaust has received increasing attention in recent decades. Recently, photocatalytic technology has been considered a practical approach for eliminating vehicle emissions. This review highlights the crucial role of photocatalytic technology in eliminating vehicle emissions using semiconductor catalysts. A particular emphasis has been placed on various photocatalytic materials, such as TiO2-based materials, Bi-based materials, and Metal–Organic Frameworks (MOFs), and their recent advances in the performance of VOC and NOx photodegradation. In addition, the applications of photocatalytic technology for the elimination of vehicle exhaust are presented (including photocatalysts combined with pavement surfaces, making photocatalysts into architectural coatings and photoreactors), which will offer a promising strategy for photocatalytic technology to remove vehicle exhaust.

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A novel slant‐plate photoreactor (SPR) immobilized with titanium dioxide (P25) was developed to address the disadvantage that the effluent on the backlight side of the corrugated plate photoreactor could not be treated. The SPR was tested and analyzed regarding the degradation of phenol under UV light. For comparison, a flat‐plate photoreactor, a slurry photoreactor, and a corrugated plate photoreactor were also examined. The performance of SPR in phenol degradation was higher than either corrugated plate photoreactor with the same angle or flat‐plate. Furthermore, SPR exhibited highest energy utilization efficiency compared to the corrugated plate photoreactor with the same angle and flat‐plate photoreactor in phenol oxidation. The superior performance of SPR was due primarily to the highly exposed catalyst surface area, high mass transfer coefficient, and multiple reuses of reflected light. In addition, the SPR was tested under natural solar light for its possible implementation in practice.