One-step synthesis of amorphous SbVO4 with remarkably stable sonocatalytic activity
Graphical abstract
Amorphous SbVO4 nanomaterials with good sonocatalytic activity were prepared by low temperature aqueous solution chemical method. The possible mechanism of acoustic catalytic reaction was discussed based on active substance capture experiment.
Introduction
The wide use of various azo dyes in the textile industry releases a large number of toxic colored wastewater, resulting in serious pollution of surface water and groundwater, which is great harm to natural ecology and human health [1], [2], [3], [4]. The elimination of toxic chemicals in wastewater is one of the important research contents in pollution control at present, and people are more and more interested in developing methods to degrade toxic water pollutants [5,6]. However, most dyes are resistant to conventional biological and physicochemical treatments due to their toxicity, stability and visibility in the water, resulting in incomplete degradation of pollutants and high cost [7,8]. In recent years, advanced oxidation process (AOPs), as the most promising and competitive new wastewater treatment method for removing organic pollutants, has been widely developed [4], [5], [6], [7], [8], [9]. As an advanced oxidation process, ultrasonic degradation has many advantages in wastewater treatment, such as simple operation, safety and no harm to the environment [10,11]. It is an ideal sewage treatment technology. However, using ultrasound alone takes a long time and high energy consumption to remove organic pollutants. Therefore, many different kinds of semiconductor materials, such as FeVO4@CeO2, Zn2SnO4-V2O5, PrVO4 and NdVO4, have been used in acoustic catalytic degradation techniques to improve the decomposition efficiency of organic pollutants and reduce energy consumption [12], [13], [14], [15].
Semiconductor materials have high stability and suitable band structure, and have great advantages in environmental governance [16], [17], [18], [19]. The structure of amorphous materials does not contain defects such as grain boundaries and has high corrosion resistance [20], [21], [22]. This makes amorphous materials have high reusability as catalysts. It is reported that amorphous semiconductors as photocatalysts have the advantages of a wide light absorption range, large specific surface area and small particle size [23]. It is found that sonocatalysis is very similar to photocatalysis [24]. By irradiation of the subjected semiconductor with an adequate photon (in UV–Vis regions). During the irradiation process, electron-hole (e/h+) pairs will be created, which immediately react with dissolved oxygen and water/hydroxyl to produce peroxide and hydroxyl radicals, respectively. This powerful oxidant attacks organic pollutants, breaking them down into smaller pieces that eventually turn into water and carbon dioxide [25,26]. When photogenic e/h+ pairs recombine, all the energy used can be consumed as heat. This disadvantage can be overcome by doping, coupling two or more semiconductors, and converting bulk semiconductors to nanosize to reduce the path length of e/h+ pair migration to the catalyst surface [27]. Some researchers have found that crystallinity has an opposite effect on some properties of semiconductor materials, which is worth further study [28,29] . We found that most of the researches focused on crystal acoustic catalysis, and there was no systematic research report on amorphous acoustic catalysis. In this study, we found that SbVO4 nanoparticles with low crystallinity have a short band gap and a small nanometer size, which may reduce the recombination of e/h+ and enable them to have a high catalytic activity, which can be used as a highly efficient acoustic catalyst for the removal of organic pollutants.
SbVO4 is a typical non-stoichiometric compound with rutile structure [30,31]. The crystal structure and morphology are closely related to their preparation conditions [32]. According to literature reports, SbVO4 nano ions have been widely used in sodium lithium-ion batteries, superhydrophobic materials and other aspects, which are a kind of multifunctional materials [32], [33], [34], [35]. In this paper, the synthesis of amorphous SbVO4 nano ions by low temperature aqueous solution chemical method was explored for the first time, and the application of SbVO4 in ultrasonic catalytic degradation was explored.
In this study, amorphous SbVO4 nanoparticles were prepared by low-temperature solution chemistry method. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the influence of crystal type on catalytic degradation and the factors affecting acoustic catalytic degradation. The main active substances effective for removal efficiency were also studied. Finally, the possible sonocatalytic mechanism of SbVO4 nanoparticles is proposed.
Section snippets
Synthesis of SbVO4 nanoparticles
Ammonium metavanadate (NH4VO3), antimony trichloride (SbCl3), and anhydrous ethanol (EtOH) were used without further treatment. 0.468 g NH4VO3 was dissolved in 30 mL hot distilled water at 90°C and cooled to room temperature.
0.912 g SbCl3 was dissolved in 30 mL EtOH, and the solution was dropped into the cooled NH4VO3 solution to obtain a dark green suspension. The mixture was stirred for 1 h and heated in a 90°C water bath for 6, 9, and 12 h respectively to obtain three samples with different
Characterization of catalyst
XRD patterns of the powder samples were plotted in Fig. 1. It can be seen from the figure that the diffraction peak data of the prepared tetragonal SbVO4 are consistent with the standard card (JCPDS:16-0600). There is no other impurity peak in the V1 sample prepared by the hydrothermal method, which indicates that SbVO4 has high purity. Compared with other samples, the diffraction peak of the sample is very sharp and the half-width is the smallest, which indicates that the crystallinity of the
Conclusion
In conclusion, amorphous SbVO4 ultrasonic catalyst has been successfully prepared by low-temperature aqueous solution method and has good ultrasonic catalytic performance. The ultrasonic catalytic efficiency was closely related to the ultrasonic power and the amount of catalyst, while the initial QB concentration and pH had little effect on the catalytic degradation of QB. Compared with UV degradation and visible degradation, amorphous SbVO4 nanoparticles have the best acoustic catalytic
Declaration of Competing interest
× The authors declare that they have no known competing financialinterestsor personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
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