A biophotoelectrocatalytic system for pollutant removal based on carbon fiber cloth supported TiO2 photoanode with oxygen vacancy defects and CuO/g-C3N4 photocathode

Abstract

As an advanced oxidation technology, photoelectrocatalysis (PEC) has been widely explored to degrade refractory contaminants in the environment. Meanwhile, enzymatic biodegradation provides an effective approach to removal of organic pollutants under mild conditions. Herein, we developed a biophotoelectrocatalytic system to remove bisphenol A (BPA) based on the combination of PEC and enzymatic biodegradation. We utilized carbon fiber cloth (CFC) as substrate to construct a dual-photoelectrode biophotoelectrocatalytic system based on three dimensional (3D) nanostructured TiO2 photoanode with oxygen vacancy defects (Ov-TiO2/CFC) and enzyme-coupled CuO/g-C3N4/CFC photocathode. The excellent PEC performance of Ov-TiO2/CFC photoanode significantly promoted the formation of reactive radicals for the degradation reaction, ascribed to efficient separation and migration of photogenerated carriers. The proposed system displayed good synergistic effect between PEC and enzymatic catalysis for BPA removal, with more than 99% degradation efficiency after 90-min treatment. This work demonstrates CFC as a useful substrate material for constructing highly efficient biophotoelectrocatalytic degradation system for organic pollutant removal.