Photocatalytic Degradation of Organic Pollutants: The Case of Conductive Polymer Supported Titanium Dioxide (TiO2) Nanoparticles: A Review

Abstract

In recent years development of different type of industries are enlarged and these industries are connected with the discarding of organic pollutants which are harmful to aquatic system and the human health. The presence of those organic pollutants in the aquatic system can result in pollution of wastewater which affects the ecosystem. Therefore, the removals of pollutants have become an ecological concern and they are vital for the environmental sustainability. Many practices have been widely applied in the treatment of organic effluent such as biological treatment, reverse osmosis, ozonation, filtration, adsorption on solid phases, incineration, and coagulation. However, each of the methodologies has its own advantages and limitations. The recent research demonstrates that advanced oxidation processes (AOPs) based on photocatalysts are valuable and this method benefits complete mineralization of organic molecules into nontoxic CO2 and H2O at the atmospheric conditions by generating active species such as hydroxyl radicals (•OH) which can remove even non-biodegradable organic compounds from wastewater. These review papers give an overview of the enhanced photocatalytic activities of titanium dioxide (TiO2) based photocatalyst. An effort has also been made to give an overview of expedient photocatalytic activity of these supported nanoparticles for their potential application in environmental remediation. In this review article also, various methods used to enhance the photocatalytic characteristics of TiO2 including doping, coupling and other supporting are discussed. It is observed that the degradation of dyes depends on several parameters like pH, catalyst load, dye concentration, reaction temperature and scavengers on the degradation of dyes.