Construction of BiOCl/Clinoptilolite Composite Photocatalyst for Boosting Formaldehyde Removal

Abstract

Binary composite was synthesized via coupling BiOCl with alkali leached natural clinoptilolite (40B0/CN), which showed retarded recombination of photo-generated carriers. The clinoptilolite was pretreated with alkali leaching, resulting in a larger pore size and high cation exchange capacity. The modified clinoptilolite was more feasible for the growth of BiOCl and to promote the adsorption ability for formaldehyde (HCHO). In addition, the cation exchange capacity was conducive to anchor Bi3+, further leading to the reduction of the particle size of BiOCl. The carrier effect of alkali leached natural clinoptilolite promoted the amorphous transformation of BiOCl at low temperature, which simultaneously produced more distortions and defects in the BiOCl lattice. The 40B0/CN composite exhibited the superior light absorption ability with a narrower band gap. The photocatalytic degradation rate for HCHO of 40B0/CN under solar light reached 87.7%, and the reaction rate constant was 0.0166 min−1, which was 1.6 times higher than that of BiOCl. This paper gave a deep insight into photocatalytic technology to efficiently degrade formaldehyde.

Investigation on the photocatalytic degradation properties of BiOX on carbendazim and its mechanism

“…BiOX has good photocatalytic activity due to its special structure. At present, various morphologies of BiOX have been successfully synthesized, including nanosheets, [22] nanoflowers [23] and nanospheres, [24] and have been widely used in water decomposition, [25] indoor gas purification, [26] photocatalytic wastewater treatment, [27] benzylamine coupling photooxidation, [28] carbon dioxide reduction [29] and other fields. However, there are few studies focused on the performance of carbendazim pesticides in photocatalytic degradation.…”