Water purification

Overview

Project status: In progress

Researchers at QUT have developed a novel form of titania and a process for fabrication of an environmentally-friendly product that purifies water. The material has been demonstrated to have a greater efficacy for the break down of phenol, than the most efficient photocatalyst available.

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Research leader
Organisational unit
Lead unit Science and Engineering Faculty
 

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Water purification

To date, applications of titanium photocatalysts have utilized either thin coatings of colloidal titanium or titanium nanotubes. These technologies suffer from an inability to be filtered from solution, or low surface area if applied as a film. The material has an extremely high surface area, found to be between 88 - 120 m2.g-1, an increase of 1.8 - 2.4 times the surface area of current state of the art.


Projects


Publications and output

Yang, Dongjiang; Liu, Hongwei; Zheng, Zhanfeng; Yuan, Yong; Zhao, Jincai; Waclawik, Eric; Ke, Xuebin; Zhu, Huai Yong, An Efficient Photocatalyst Structure: TiO2(B) Nanofibers with a Shell of Anatase Nanocrystals, J. Am. Chem. Soc. 131, 17885-17893, 2009.

Zhanfeng Zheng, Jaclyn Teo, Xi Chen, Hongwei Liu, Yong Yuan, Eric R. Waclawik, Ziyi Zhong  and Huaiyong Zhu, Correlation of the Catalytic Activity for Oxidation Taking Place on Various TiO2 Surfaces with Surface OH-Groups and Surface Oxygen Vacancies. Chem. Eur. J. 16, 1202-1211, 2010.