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Titanium dioxide lamellae bearing graphitic carbon nitride fixed on carbon felt as the photoanode in a photocatalytic fuel cell for use in tetracycline degradation and electricity generation

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Abstract

The composite g-C3N4-TiO2 was successfully synthesized by sol–gel method and fixed on carbon felt to obtain g-C3N4-TiO2/CF, which was used as the anode of photocatalytic fuel cell for efficient degradation of tetracycline and power generation. The results of SEM, EDS, XRD, FT-IR and XPS imply that the g-C3N4-TiO2/CF has been prepared successfully. The g-C3N4-TiO2/CF has more advantages in structure, photocatalytic activity and photoelectric properties, which are proved by UV–Vis, PL, photocurrent spectral, OCP and Mott–Schottky plots. As expected, the g-C3N4-TiO2/CF exhibited a prominent degradation efficiency of 98.3% in the photocatalytic performance of tetracycline hydrochloride (TC) under 100 W LED. The dual-chamber fuel cell was constructed with g-C3N4-TiO2/CF as the photocatalytic anode, and the initial voltage of the cell reached 90 mV. The degradation pathway of TC is also proposed.

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Data availability

All data generated or analyzed during this study are included in this published article.

Abbreviations

CF:

Carbon felt

DRS:

Diffuse reflectance spectroscopy

EDS:

Energy dispersive spectrometer

FT-IR:

Fourier transform infrared

HPLC:

High-performance liquid chromatography

LED:

Light-emitting diode

OCP:

Open circuit potential

SEM:

Scanning electron microscopy

BET:

Brunauer–Emmet–Teller

TC:

Tetracycline hydrochloride

UV:

Ultraviolet

UV–Vis:

Ultraviolet–visible

PL:

Photoluminescence

XPS:

X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy

XRD:

X-ray diffraction

LC-MS:

Liquid chromatography–mass spectrometry

PFC:

photocatalytic fuel cell

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Acknowledgements

The authors acknowledge Ms. Xuan Wang for guidance and assistance.

Funding

This study was supported by the Project of the National Natural Science Foundation of China: Study on the degradation mechanism of antibiotic-containing wastewater by microbial fuel cell under visible light (No. 22065027) and the Natural Science Foundation of Inner Mongolia (No. 2019BS02013).

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Author notes

  1. Wang Li and Sen Zhang have contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Ecology and Environment, Inner Mongolia University, 24 Zhaojun Road, Hohhot, 010021, Inner Mongolia, China

    Yingzhe Shi, Wang Li, Sen Zhang, Jianxun Cao, Shishi Kong, Jiye Xin & Xuan Wang

  2. Key Laboratory of Environmental Pollution Control and Waste Recycling, Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, 24 Zhaojun Road, Hohhot, 010021, Inner Mongolia, China

    Xuan Wang

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  1. Yingzhe Shi
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  2. Wang Li
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Contributions

YS and XW performed the data analyses and wrote the manuscript; WL and SZ performed the experiment; JC helped perform the analysis with constructive discussions; SK and JX contributed significantly to analysis and manuscript preparation.

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Correspondence to Xuan Wang.

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This article does not contain any studies with human participants or animals performed by any of the authors. In this experiment, we did not collect any samples of human and animals.

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Shi, Y., Li, W., Zhang, S. et al. Titanium dioxide lamellae bearing graphitic carbon nitride fixed on carbon felt as the photoanode in a photocatalytic fuel cell for use in tetracycline degradation and electricity generation. J Mater Sci: Mater Electron 34, 227 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10854-022-09425-w

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