A dual-purpose photocatalytic reaction for hydrogen evolution and simultaneous organic pollutant degradation of V2O5/Ppy based composite photocatalyst

Abstract

The present work reports for the facile synthesis of novel vanadium oxide/polypyrrole (V2O5/Ppy) nanohybrids using various loadings of the V2O5. This novel hybrid photocatalyst was characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), Raman, UV–Visible absorption spectra (UV–Vis), photoluminescence spectra (PLS) and N2 adsorption-desorption analysis. XRD and TEM results suggest that V2O5 with individual spherical shaped nanoparticles of around 20–25 nm, which is uniformly wrapped on the surface of the Ppy sheets. A significant reduction in the bad gap energy (3.06–2.13 eV) and prevent the electron-hole recombination process was examined by UV and PL studies. The photocatalytic degradation efficiency was carried out for Reactive Black 31 (RB 31) and 4-chlorophenol (4-CP) dyes under visible light. The results illustrate that the optimal hybrid catalyst could reach 99 % of removal efficiency towards RB31 with visible light irradiation for 60 min. Moreover, the catalyst show high TOC efficiency (88%) high apparent constant (0.9189 min−1), and good stability with multiple cycle experiments. The improved photocatalytic mechanism was also discussed in detail. In comparison to V2O5 (425 μmol−1h−1 of H2) and PPy (151 μmol−1h−1 of H2), the optimised composite, 15 wt% V2O5 incorporated PPy showed a remarkable production rate under visible light (2255 μmol−1h−1 of H2).