Nanogold Loaded, Nitrogen Doped TiO2 Photocatalysts for the Degradation of Aquatic Pollutants Under Sun Light

Along with the rapid development of industry, various issues related to energy and environment got generated which are now grown into a significant level. The hazardous waste materials with high concentrations are being discharged directly or indirectly into water bodies without adequate treatment to remove harmful compounds. The World Bank estimates that 17 to 20 percent of industrial water pollution comes from textile dyeing and treatment causing a major global problem. A facile and cheap method for removing inorganic and organic pollutants from wastewater has much relevance in modern world. Dyes are an important class of aquatic pollutants. Its complexity and variety makes it difficult to find a unique treatment procedure that entirely covers the effective elimination of all types of dyes. Particularly, biochemical oxidation suffers from significant limitations since most dyestuffs commercially available have been intentionally designed to resist aerobic microbial degradation and also they may get converted into toxic or carcinogenic compounds. The physical methods such as flocculation, reverse osmosis and adsorption on activated charcoal are nondestructive and merely transfer the pollutant to other media, thus causing secondary pollution (Binitha, 2009, as cited in Belver, 2006) Heterogeneous photocatalysis with various oxide semiconductor photocatalysts is an efficient and rapidly expanding purification technique for water and air. Semiconductor-oxides are a popular class of materials because of their functionalities and applications in the field of photocatalysis and generation of photoelectricity.