Molybdenum Sulfide (MoS2)/Ordered Mesoporous Carbon (OMC) Tubular Mesochannel Photocatalyst for Enhanced Photocatalytic Oxidation for Removal of Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs).

Li He,De Zhao,Yao Zeng,Xuemin Qiu,Guo Jia,Wei Guan

doi:10.3389/fchem.2021.748622

Abstract

Air pollutants cause severe problems in urban areas, specifically in terms of toxicological impacts on human health. Therefore, it is urgent to develop an effective, safe, and inexpensive technique to remove these air pollutants. In this study, the MoS2/OMC heterojunction photocatalyst was successfully synthesized by a hydrothermal process and used for improving photocatalytic oxidation performance for removing VOCs. Formaldehyde was used as a model VOC in the gas phase and was removed at room temperature under visible light irradiation. For my research, the microstructure and morphology of the photocatalyst were deeply characterized, and the results indicated that MoS2 were successfully coupled into OMC materials to prepare MoS2/OMC heterojunction photocatalysts. The trend of photocatalytic efficiency for formaldehyde decomposition was MoS2/OMC > MoS2 > OMC. Besides, the MoS2/OMC heterojunction photocatalyst showed an excellent regeneration performance after several recycles, indicating the potential of MoS2/OMC composite as a promising photocatalyst for VOC removal. These results indicated that the photocatalytic reactor containing MoS2/OMC photocatalysts was highly active and stable.

Highlights

Indoor air quality has a very important impact on human health and comfortable life, and the bad indoor air quality can lead to physical discomfort, poor health, and a variety of diseases (Lim et al, 2021)
The MoS2/Ordered mesoporous carbon (OMC) heterojunction photocatalyst was successfully synthesized by a hydrothermal process and used for improving photocatalytic oxidation performance for Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) decomposition
According to the definition of the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry based on pore width (Han et al, 2019), pores in the materials can be classified into macropores, mesopores (2 nm < pore size

Summary

Introduction

Indoor air quality has a very important impact on human health and comfortable life, and the bad indoor air quality can lead to physical discomfort, poor health, and a variety of diseases (Lim et al, 2021). Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) among these indoor air pollutants are difficult to control and harmful to human body (Bunch et al, 2014; Chen et al, 2021). Formaldehyde is one of the main indoor organic pollutants affecting human health; efficient removal technology for detection and control of VOCs in the indoor environment has attracted much more attention (Zeng et al, 2020; Huang et al, 2021b). It is imperative to control the emission of VOCs from the source, and more efforts have been made to develop efficient technologies to resolve the problem of VOC elimination, such as biodegradation (Wantz et al, 2021), adsorption (Li et al, 2021b), and catalytic oxidation (Guo et al, 2021). Photocatalytic oxidation technology mainly produces reactive oxygen species on the surface of the catalyst by light and achieves the degradation of contaminant and hydrogen evolution (Guan et al, 2018; Zada et al, 2020; Zhang et al, 2021d)

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Results

Conclusion