Bulletin of Chemical Reaction Engineering & Catalysis
2023: BCREC Volume 18 Issue 1 Year 2023 (April 2023)

Environmental Footprint Assessment of Methylene Blue Photodegradation using Graphene-based Titanium Dioxide

Kelvert Kong (School of Energy and Chemical Engineering, Xiamen University Malaysia, Jalan Sunsuria, Bandar Sunsuria, 43900 Sepang, Selangor Darul Ehsan)
Ying Weng (School of Energy and Chemical Engineering, Xiamen University Malaysia, Jalan Sunsuria, Bandar Sunsuria, 43900 Sepang, Selangor Darul Ehsan)
Weng Hoong Lam (School of Energy and Chemical Engineering, Xiamen University Malaysia, Jalan Sunsuria, Bandar Sunsuria, 43900 Sepang, Selangor Darul Ehsan||Malaysia College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Xiamen University, 361005 Xiamen)
Sin Yuan Lai (School of Energy and Chemical Engineering, Xiamen University Malaysia, Jalan Sunsuria, Bandar Sunsuria, 43900 Sepang, Selangor Darul Ehsan||Malaysia College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Xiamen University, 361005 Xiamen)



Article Info

Publish Date
30 Apr 2023

Abstract

To date, photocatalysis has received much attention in terms of the degradation of organic pollutants in wastewater. Various studies have shown that graphene-based photocatalysts are one of the impressive options owing to their intriguing features, including high surface area, good conductivity, low recombination rate of electron-hole pair, and fast charge separation and transfer. However, the environmental impacts of the photocatalysts synthesis and their photodegradation activity remain unclear. Thus, this report aims to identify the environmental impacts associated with the photodegradation of methylene blue (MB) over reduced graphene oxide/titanium oxide photocatalyst (TiO2/rGO) using Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). The life cycle impacts were assessed using ReCiPe 2016 v1.1 midpoint method, Hierachist version in Gabi software. A cradle-to-gate approach and a functional unit of 1 kg TiO2/rGOwere adopted in the study. Several important parameters, such as the solvent type (ultrapure water, ethanol, and isopropanol), with/without silver ion doping, and visible light power consumption (150, 300, and 500 W) were evaluated in this study. In terms of the selection of solvent, ultrapure water is certainly a better choice since it contributed the least negative impact on the environment. Furthermore, it is not advisable to dope the photocatalyst with silver ions since the increment in performance is insufficient to offset the environmental impact that it caused. The results of different power of visible light for MB degradation showed that the minimum power level, 150 W, could give a comparable photodegradation efficiency and better environmental impacts compared to higher power light sources. Copyright © 2023 by Authors, Published by BCREC Group. This is an open access article under the CC BY-SA License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0). 

Copyrights © 2023






Journal Info

Abbrev

bcrec

Publisher

Subject

Chemical Engineering, Chemistry & Bioengineering Chemistry

Description

Bulletin of Chemical Reaction Engineering & Catalysis, a reputable international journal, provides a forum for publishing the novel technologies related to the catalyst, catalysis, chemical reactor, kinetics, and chemical reaction engineering. Scientific articles dealing with the following topics in ...