Visible-light Active Heterogeneous Photocatalysis for Wastewater Treatment

Abstract

Heterogeneous photocatalysis is an upcoming field wherein a catalyst that gets activated when solar energy
falls on it, photo-degrades the organics present in the effluent into harmless water and carbon dioxide. However, most of
the research in this field has been carried out on TiO2, which has a limitation of being able to utilise only the ultra-violet
light of the solar radiations only. Hence, to be able to utilise a wider range of the available radiations, research is now
being focussed on developing photocatalysts which work in the visible spectrum as well. This paper discusses the stateof-the-art in this area. The first part outlines the basic principles and mechanism of photocatalysis, while the second one
discusses in brief the methods in which visible-light photocatalytic materials can be synthesised and utilised that are
capable of yielding a higher overall efficiency of the process.