Synthesis of photosensitizer-layered doubled hydroxide nanohybrids for degradation of organic pollutants.

• Main Author: Zhuang, Ziwei.
• Other Authors: Xu Rong
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2009
• Subjects: DRNTU::Engineering::Chemical engineering::Biotechnological production
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/16500
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

The amount of textile pollutants discharged into the water bodies has been a major concern over the years. With increasing stringent regulations on textile discharges, it prompted the research and developments of better and more efficient catalyst and water-treatment procedures for the polluted water. Phthalocyanine complexes are wellknown environmental photo-sensitizer and easily synthesized at a low cost and have a collection ability of about 50% of the energy available in the solar spectrum, hence it could be possible to utilized solar energy and molecular oxygen in the water for waste water treatment. This report presents the findings of the synthesized of a novel coral-like Layered Doubled Hydroxide (LDH) intercalated with Copper Phthalalocyanine tetrasulfonic acid Sodium salt (CuPcTs) and the investigation into the photo-degradation ability of the catalyst as compared to literature values reported. It was also shown that the photo-activity of Mg2Al-LDH – CuPcTs in the degradation of the Methylene Blue molecules dominates over the adsorption process by about 7 times. Hence, the major mechanism for the degradation of the MB molecules is due to the photo-degradation process. When compared to literature values on MB decolourisation from Appendix A, this newly synthesized catalyst has a much improved catalyst concentration of 0.1gL-1 within a time frame of about two hour to approximately fully decolourise the 40ppm of MB. This shows that the current coral-like Mg2Al-LDH-CuPcTs synthesized show great promises. Mg4Al-LDH-CuPcTs was synthesized to compare against the newly synthesized coral-like Mg2Al-LDH-CuPcTs and on average the photo-activity of the coral-like Mg2Al-LDH-CuPcTs outperformed the Mg4Al-LDH-CuPcTs by about 15%.