A novel Z-Scheme photocatalyst (TCN) was prepared with TiO 2 and graphitic carbon nitride (GCN) and utilized to study the degradation efficiency of a binary dye mixture consisting of 5 ppm Rhodamine B (RhB) and 5 ppm Crystal Violet (CV) solutions by persulfate activation. Derivative spectrometric analysis was adopted to find the degradation efficiencies of the individual dyes in the mixture.The results indicate that in the presence of persulfate ions 0.6 TCN gives 100 % degradation in 60 min and 30 min for Rh B and CV, respectively. Hydroxyl radicals, superoxide radicals, and sulfate radicals were found to be the active species involved in photocatalytic degradation. From the results of radical scavenging experiments and band potentials of the semiconductors, a plausible mechanism of photocatalytic degradation of the model pollutants is proposed.

Biodiesel has recently received widespread attention as an essential source of renewable and environmentally friendly energy due to its ease of production and clean burning. Cashew nutshell is a biomass waste readily available in India. This work studies the production of fatty acid methyl ester (FAME) from the cashew nut shell liquid (CNSL) using sulfonated cashew nutshell biochar catalyst by transesterification reaction. Catalyst efficiency is compared with a conventional catalyst for biodiesel production. Characterization of the catalyst was done using FTIR, TGA, elemental analysis, and BET. Transesterification studies were carried out using KOH and the biochar catalyst. These studies inferred that the highest conversion of CNSL to FAME is achieved by using the conventional catalyst KOH (94.2% yield) and process parameters of 650C reaction temperature, 1hr reaction time, 18:1 methanol to oil ratio, and 5 w/w % catalyst weight. The highest conversion achieved using the biochar catalyst was 43.4% at optimum process parameters. The study revealed the feasibility of producing FAME from waste biomass, which lowers production costs and benefits environmental sustainability.