PII.081 Ferric chlorophyllin as TiO2 surface modifier for visible light-responsive heterogeneous photocatalysis

Resumo

The use of pesticides is essential for the food security of the world's population, but their inappropriate use/application to the soil causes serious environmental problems for fauna, flora and humans. These pesticides, among them Prochloraz (PCZ), are not degraded/removed in conventional sewage and water treatment plants. The use of advanced oxidative processes such as heterogeneous photocatalysis (HP) aims to generate HO^• radicals during the process for PCZ degradation, however, when using pure TiO₂ one of its major limitations is the use of only UV radiation due to its high bandgap (3.26 eV). In order to reduce this value, the process of doping TiO₂ with natural dyes can be performed. In this work, TiO₂ was doped with ferric chlorophyllin (Chl-Fe), which allowed the decrease of the bandgap (2.65 eV) and, consequently, a significant increase of PCZ degradation, (24% for pure TiO₂ to 98.3% for TiO₂/Chl-Fe 1%), when using a simulate solar radiation source.

Keywords: heterogeneous photocatalysis, TiO2, chlorophyll, doping, solar radiation