A Novel Tri-Functionality pH-Magnetic-Photocatalytic Hybrid Organic-Inorganic Polyoxometalates Augmented Microspheres for Polluted Water Treatment

The severe water pollution from effluent dyes threatens human health. This study created pH-magnetic-photocatalytic polymer microspheres to conveniently separate the photocatalyst nanoparticles from the treated water by applying an external magnetic field. While fabricating magnetic nanoparticles' (MNPs) microspheres, incorporating 0.5 wt.% iron oxide (Fe3O4) showed the best magnetophoretic separation ability, as all the MNPs microspheres were attracted toward the external magnet. Subsequently, hybrid organic-inorganic polyoxometalates (HPOM), a self-synthesized photocatalyst, were linked with the functionalized magnetic nanoparticles (f-MNPs) to prepare augmented magnetic-photocatalytic microspheres. The photodegradation dye removal efficiency of the augmented magnetic-photocatalytic microspheres (f-MNPs-HPOM) was then compared with that of the commercial titanium dioxide (TiO2) photocatalyst (f-MNPs-TiO2). Results showed that f-MNPs-HPOM microspheres with 74 +/- 0.7% photocatalytic removal efficiency better degraded methylene orange (MO) than f-MNPs-TiO2 (70 +/- 0.8%) at an unadjusted pH under UV-light irradiation for 90 min. The excellent performance was mainly attributed to the lower band-gap energy of HPOM (2.65 eV), which required lower energy to be photoactivated under UV light. The f-MNPs-HPOM microspheres demonstrated excellent reusability and stability in the photo-decolorization of MO, as the microspheres retained nearly the same removal percentage throughout the three continuous cycles. The degradation rate was also found to follow the pseudo-first-order kinetics. Furthermore, f-MNPs-HPOM microspheres were pH-responsive in the photodegradation of MO and methylene blue (MB) at pH 3 (acidic) and pH 9 (alkaline). Overall, it was demonstrated that using HPOM photocatalysts in the preparation of magnetic-photocatalytic microspheres resulted in better dye degradation than TiO2 photocatalysts.

Automated summary

This study developed pH-magnetic-photocatalytic polymer microspheres to easily separate photocatalyst nanoparticles from treated water using an external magnetic field. Compared to the commercial titanium dioxide photocatalyst, the microspheres showed better dye degradation efficiency at an unadjusted pH.