Abstract
As the world’s population continue to grow annually, the demand of drinking water also increases. Countries that are facing water scarcity are currently facing high demand rates of clean water. One of the major contributors to water scarcity is water pollution; this is often caused by the release of wastewater by various sectors which include factories, industries and laboratories, among others. Such wastewater contains toxic materials which end up in drinking water sources and these materials are suspected of being endocrine-disruptive-chemicals (EDCs).
The increase in concentrations of contaminants (particularly dyes) in water show that conventional wastewater treatments methods are not efficient enough, hence advanced technologies such as Advanced Oxidation Processes (AOPs) should be implemented to treat persistent contaminants in water. AOPs are characterized by the production of highly reactive hydroxyl (HO•) and superoxide (O2-•) anion radicals, which are suitable for a rapid, continuous and indiscriminative reaction with organic compounds inducing almost complete degradation. Such AOPs include the Fenton’s process which uses peroxide-iron (II) (H2O2/Fe2+) as the Fenton reagent and Photocatalysis which makes use of semiconductors such as titanium dioxide (TiO2). AOPs are classified as clean technology for the treatment of wastewater and can degrade micro pollutants with reaction rate of up to 109 Lmol-1s-1 yielding CO2, H2O and inorganic ions as the final products
Pristine and doped TiO2 photocatalysts were prepared using a modified sol-gel method in both acidic and basic medium. The loading of N was varied from 1 to 5 %. Polyethersulphone (PES) nanofibers were electrospun from a PES polymer solution that was prepared by dissolving PES in N,N-Dimethylfomamide (DMF) at room temperature overnight. The polymer solutions of concentration 18 to 29 % PES/DMF (m/m %) were obtained. The resulting solutions were electrospun at the following conditions: 20 - 25 cm tip to collector distance, 12 kV working voltage and 0.5 ml flow rate. The electrospinning of PES/Photocatalyst (PES/PC) nanofiber was performed under the optimized conditions of PES nanofibers. The photocatalysts loading was varied between 1.5, 2 and 2.5 % while PES was
M.Sc. (Chemistry)