Photocatalytic and biodegradative investigation of rhodamine b using modified metal free graphitic carbon nitride composites and selected bacterial strains

Abstract

A potential and viable solution for future alternative energy source and newlineenvironmental pollution is the direct conversion of sunlight into chemical energy by newlineusing photocatalysis method. The greatest challenge in this field is to design and newlinesynthesis new types of advanced materials with the desired electrical and optical newlineproperties that can replace the conventional raw materials, currently used. newlinePhotocatalysis is an attractive yet very challenging process to attain clean and cheap newlinerenewable energy without the dependence on fossil fuels and without carbondioxide newlineemission which makes it eco-friendly. Various metal oxide semiconductors have been newlineexplored as possible photocatalysts in the past decades. In recent years, polymeric newlinegraphitic carbon nitride (g-C3N4), a metal-free photocatalyst has promising newlineapplications in photodecomposition of organic pollutants and artificial photosynthesis newlineunder visible light due to its small band gap of 2.7 eV. However, the photocatalytic newlineefficiency of pure g-C3N4 is greatly limited by a high recombination probability of newlinephotoexcited charge carriers. In this thesis, designing and fabricating efficient g-C3N4 newlinebased metal-free composite photocatalysts with enhanced photocatalytic activities newlineunder sunlight irradiation and comparing it with biodegradation using isolated newlinebacterial strains Bacillus sp and Pseudomonas sp has been appropriately explained. newlineInorder to achieve this photocatalytic efficiency, four strategies have been newlineemployed in the present work. First, the pure g-C3N4 is prepared by thermal treatment newlineof precursor melamine. The obtained g-C3N4 composite is used as the host material to newlineconstruct other five types of metal-free composite samples. newline