Integrating Ozonolysis with Photocatalysis to Enhance the Degradation of Bisphenol-A

Abstract

Over the past few years, the increasing industrial, agriculture, and human activities have increased the use of chemicals. The increase in human society and poor sewerage system has upsurged a load of organic pollutants in water. Every year, around 2.8 billion kg of Bisphenol-A (BPA) are manufactured around the world. BPA is employed in the fabrication of polycarbonate plastic, epoxy resin, and other plastic products in 99% of cases. BPA is reported as carcinogenic and toxic and also suspected as Endocrine disrupting chemical which causes abnormal human development. Several methods currently are in practice for the degradation of BPA. Most of the chemical and physical methods are energy intensive and time intensive. They also produce a secondary aromatic compound during the treatment. Advanced oxidative processes such as oxidation provide viable pathway for degradation of BPA. However, ozonation is a non-selective and energy-intensive process. Photocatalysts, on the other hand, provide an efficient way for deterioration. However, because of the greater band gap and quick charge recombination, there is a high photocatalyst loading (amount of catalytic per liter of wastewater) and light absorption. Both ozonolysis and photocatalysis have difficulties that can be solved by combining the two technologies into a single process. The goal of this research is to build an integrated photocatalyst and ozonolysis process that uses plasma microreactors to degrade persistent organic compounds. DBD-Corona hybrid plasma microreactor is generated for the current study. The optimized conditions for the complete degradation of BPA were 6KV,26KHz,3cm electrode length and 1LPM of air flow. For the integrated system of ozonation and photocatalysis a novel catalyst Ni-CeO2 was synthesized and undergoes different characterization techniques, such as XRD, FTIR have been used to characterize the synthesized photocatalyst. The power consumption of the DBD-Corona micro-plasma reactor was found to be 480W, measured electrically through the oscilloscope with bandwidth of 200MHz by keeping the parameters optimized. By adding different dose of synthesized photocatalyst Ni-CeO2 in the ozonation system 1.0g/L catalytic dose had shown greatest assistance in degrading Bisphenol-A