Photocatalytic Degradation of Methylene Blue under UV Light Irradiation on Prepared Carbonaceous TiO

This study involves the investigation of altering the photocatalytic activity of TiO2 using composite materials. Three different forms of modified TiO2, namely, TiO2/activated carbon (AC), TiO2/carbon (C), and TiO2/PANi, were compared. The TiO2/carbon composite was obtained by pyrolysis of TiO2/PANi prepared by in situ polymerization method, while the TiO2/activated carbon (TiO2/AC) was obtained after treating TiO2/carbon with 1.0 M KOH solution, followed by calcination at a temperature of 450°C. X-ray powder diffraction (XRD), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), Fourier transform infrared (FTIR), thermogravimetric analysis (TG-DTA), Brunauer-Emmet-Teller (BET), and UV-Vis spectroscopy were used to characterize and evaluate the prepared samples. The specific surface area was determined to be in the following order: TiO2/AC > TiO2/C > TiO2/PANi > TiO2 (179 > 134 > 54 > 9 m2 g−1). The evaluation of photocatalytic performance for the degradation of methylene blue under UV light irradiation was also of the same order, with 98 > 84.7 > 69% conversion rate, which is likely to be attributed to the porosity and synergistic effect in the prepared samples

Encapsulation of 2-amino-2-methyl-1-propanol with tetraethyl orthosilicate for CO2 capture

Carbon capture is widely recognised as an essential strategy to meet global goals for climate protection. Although various CO2 capture technologies including absorption, adsorption and membrane exist, they are not yet mature for post-combustion power plants mainly due to high energy penalty. Hence researchers are concentrating on developing non-aqueous solvents like ionic liquids, CO2-binding organic liquids, nanoparticle hybrid materials and microencapsulated sorbents to minimize the energy consumption for carbon capture. This research aims to develop a novel and efficient approach by encapsulating sorbents to capture CO2 in a cold environment. The conventional emulsion technique was selected for the microcapsule formulation by using 2-amino-2-methyl-1-propanol (AMP) as the core sorbent and silicon dioxide (SiO2) as the shell. This paper reports the findings on the formulated microcapsules including key formulation parameters, microstructure, size distribution and thermal cycling stability. Furthermore, the effects of microcapsule quality and absorption temperature on the CO2 loading capacity of the microcapsules were investigated using a self-developed pressure decay method. The preliminary results have shown that the AMP microcapsules are promising to replace conventional sorbents.Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC

Activated carbon-supported CuO nanoparticles: a hybrid material for carbon dioxide adsorption

Activated carbon-supported copper(II) oxide (CuO) nanoparticles were synthesized by simple impregnation method to improve carbon dioxide (CO2) adsorption capacity of the support. The structural and chemical properties of the hybrid material were characterized by scanning electron microscopy (SEM), energy dispersive X-ray (EDX), X-ray diffraction (XRD), Xray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), atomic absorption spectroscopy (AAS), and Brunauer-Emmett-Teller (BET) analyses. The analyses showed that CuO nanoparticles are well-distributed on the activated carbon surface. The CO2 adsorption behavior of the activated carbon-supported CuO nanoparticles was observed by thermogravimetric analysis (TGA), temperature programmed desorption (TPD), Fourier transform infrared (FTIR), and BETanalyses. The results showed that CuO nanoparticle loading on activated carbon led to about 70 % increase in CO2 adsorption capacity of activated carbon under standard conditions (1 atm and 298 K). The main contributor to the observed increase is an improvement in chemical adsorption of CO2 due to the presence of CuO nanoparticles on activated carbon