Hydrogen peroxide-assisted photocatalysis under solar light irradiation: Interpretation of interaction effects between an active photocatalyst and H2O2

In this work, the combination of H2O2 and an active visible-light-driven photocatalyst (Ag-S/PEG/TiO2) was utilized under natural solar radiation for the degradation of 2-nitrophenol (2-NP), and interaction effects between the photocatalyst and hydrogen peroxide were analyzed. For this purpose, experiments were designed using the response surface methodology based on the central composite design. The resulting data was utilized to obtain a model for the prediction of response (the degradation efficiency) as a function of two independent factors (H2O2 concentration and the photocatalyst loading). The statistical analysis indicated that optimum values of each of the two independent factors decreased by increasing the other one and vice versa. Moreover, it was found that adding the optimal amount of H2O2 to the solution, which contained just the photocatalyst, can enhance the degradation significantly (up to 45 %). However, using higher concentrations of H2O2 may decrease the efficiency. The global optimum condition was found to be 545 ppm and 316 mM for Ag-S/PEG/TiO2 loading and H2O2 concentration, respectively. In this condition, the degradation efficiency of 2-NP reached 92.4 % after only 45 min of solar light irradiation.