Construction of TiO2 on cotton straw deposited on g-C3N4 heterojunction to improve the photocatalytic degradation activity of methylene blue and tetracycline

Abstract

In this study, agricultural waste cotton stalk was used as biomass carbon source, calcined with TiO2 at a high temperature, deposited in a TiO2 lattice, and used as an electron acceptor to inhibit photogenerated electron recombination. Subsequently, it underwent secondary calcination with g-C3N4 to form a C-TiO2/g-C3N4 composite catalyst. Experimental results showed that the coupling of carbon-doped TiO2 and g-C3N4 accelerated photogenerated electron–hole pairs pair migration, effectively inhibited the recombination of photogenerated carriers, and thus improved the removal efficiency of methylene blue (MB) and tetracycline hydrochloride (TC). Upon irradiation with a 500 W xenon lamp, the degradation rates of MB and TC achieved were 92.6 % and 95.3 % in 90 min, respectively.