Affiliations 

  • 1 Center for Frontier Materials Research, School of Materials Engineering, Universiti Malaysia Perlis, 02600, Arau, Perlis, Malaysia
  • 2 Center for Frontier Materials Research, School of Materials Engineering, Universiti Malaysia Perlis, 02600, Arau, Perlis, Malaysia. Electronic address: holingee@yahoo.com
  • 3 Water Research Group (WAREG), School of Environmental Engineering, Universiti Malaysia Perlis, 02600, Arau, Perlis, Malaysia
  • 4 Institute of Nano Electronic Engineering, Universiti Malaysia Perlis, 01000, Kangar, Perlis, Malaysia
Chemosphere, 2018 Oct;209:935-943.
PMID: 30114743 DOI: 10.1016/j.chemosphere.2018.06.157

Abstract

Reactive green 19, acid orange 7 and methylene blue are employed as the organic pollutants in this work. A photocatalytic fuel cell is constructed based on the idea of immobilizing zinc oxide onto zinc photoanode and platinum loaded carbon cathode, both evaluated under sunlight and ultraviolet irradiation, respectively. Influence of light and dye structures on the performance of photocatalytic fuel cell are examined. With reactive green 19, 93% and 86% of color removal are achieved after 8 h of photocatalytic fuel cell treatment under sunlight and ultraviolet irradiation, respectively. The decolorization rate of diazo reactive green 19 is higher than acid orange 7 (monoazo dye) when both dyes are treated by photocatalytic fuel cell under sunlight and ultraviolet irradiation, as the electron releasing groups (-NH-triazine) allow reactive green 19 easier to be oxidized. Comparatively, acid orange 7 is less favorable to be oxidized. The degradation of methylene blue is enhanced under sunlight irradiation due to the occurrence of self-sensitized photodegradation. When methylene blue is employed in the photocatalytic fuel cell under sunlight irradiation, the short circuit current (0.0129 mA cm-2) and maximum power density (0.0032 mW cm-2) of photocatalytic fuel cell greatly improved.

* Title and MeSH Headings from MEDLINE®/PubMed®, a database of the U.S. National Library of Medicine.