Development of a novel lightweight brick-activated carbon based BiVO4 photocatalyst and its adsorption-photocatalytic behavior for toxic dye removal in wastewater

Abstract

The purpose of this research was to develop a novel photocatalyst by loading BiVO4 (BVO) particles on lightweight brick-activated carbon (LWB-AC). The characterizations of as-prepare samples were studied using X-ray diffraction (XRD), Brunauer-Emmett-Teller (BET), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and UV–VIS –NIR spectrophotometer (UV-VIS-NIR) techniques. The adsorption-photocatalytic methylene blue (MB) removal, methyl orange (MO) removal and rhodamine B (RhB) removal of the as-prepared LWB-AC based BVO photocatalyst were tested by irradiating visible light. The results showed that the LWB-AC based BVO photocatalyst exhibited the highest adsorption-photocatalytic efficiency for the removal of MB, MO and RhB dyes under visible light irradiation as compared to the other samples. This might be due to the synergistic effect between AC and BVO on the surface of LWB. Moreover, the presence of both AC and BVO on the surface of LWB helped in preventing the electron-hole recombination, resulting in the enhanced adsorption-photocatalytic activity. For reusability tests, the LWB-AC based BVO photocatalyst did not show the loss of adsorption-photodegradation ability of MB, MO and RhB dyes after five runs. A probable adsorption-photodegradation mechanism of LWB-AC based BVO photocatalyst was also proposed.