ARENILLAS, A.; MENÉNDEZ, A.; MATOS, J.:
CARBON 2019, JULY 14-19, LEXINGTON, KY.
Abstract
Introduction
The most important challenges for 21st century are minimizing the environmental pollution and the use of a sustainable and clean energy source for the continuous increasing demand. And these complicated tasks are even more difficult with the continuous global population growth. In this context, photocatalysis has emerged as a sustainable process for water pollutant remediation by using a renewable energy source. TiO2 has been reported as the best photocatalyst but it has important disadvantages, and one of them is the low adsorption capacity due to its low porosity. Them are some studies using active carbons with high microporosity as TiO2 support to be used in photocatalytic reactions. However, in water treatment processes the so called feeder pores may pay a relevant role for an optimum procedure and there is a lack of knowledge about the role of these pores in photocatalysis. In this work, synthetic carbons with very well controlled porous structure were produced (i.e. tailored pore diameter from 5 to 100 nm). These materials present analogous surface chemistry and microporosity (and thus specific surface area), being the feeder pore size the only difference. The role of the mean pore size on the adsorption capacity and photodegradation of yellow-5 (Y-5) was evaluated.