Abstract
Sewage treatment and water reuse are, undoubtedly, one of the main points on scientific agenda of the 21st century. Many technologies for sewage treatment are available; however, it is still as an open issue that deserves much attention in order to facilitate their application, develop more effective methods and propose alternative treatment for unusual situations. Developing high performance materials for sewage treatment fits the idea of the development of efficient and alternative methods for microorganism removal and the high organic load of wastewater and is of fundamental importance. In this paper, a heterojunction with perovskite-type strontium stannate (SrSnO3) and graphitic carbon nitride (g-C3N4) — SrSnO3/g-C3N4 — was synthesized and used for photocatalytic treatment of domestic sewage using only sunlight. Results were accompanied by assessing the total organic carbon decrease and removal of pathogenic microorganisms. X-ray diffraction and X-ray excited photoelectron spectroscopy demonstrated that a heterostructure was successfully formed and photocatalytic tests showed an important activity in the visible range, i.e., under sunlight. Exposing raw sewage to 240 min (from 11 a.m. until 3 p.m.) in the presence of SrSnO3/g-C3N4, led to a 56.1% mineralization. This process was 2.5 more efficient than photolysis under sunlight. Moreover, the treated sewage showed no coliform growth (either fecal or total) or heterotrophic bacteria. This simple treatment makes sewage suitable and safe for reuse, for example, for agriculture purposes according to Brazilian regulations criteria and could be an alternative for isolated areas in which sewage treatment plants are not available.
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The authors wish to thank the CNPq, CAPES, FAPDF (Brazilian funding agencies) for their financial support. The English text of this paper has been revised by Sidney Pratt, Canadian, MAT (The Johns Hopkins University), RSAdip - TESL (Cambridge University).
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Idio contributed to the study conception, design, performed experiment and data collection. The data was analyzed and interpreted by Idio, Ingrid and Daniel. The draft of the manuscript was written by Idio. Ingrid and Daniel offered all the financial support. All the authors read and approved the final manuscript.
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de Sousa Filho, I.A., Freire, D.O. & Weber, I.T. Organic load removal and microbial disinfection of raw domestic sewage using SrSnO3/g-C3N4 with sunlight. Environ Sci Pollut Res 28, 45009–45018 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-021-13526-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-021-13526-0