engleski

TiO2 AND TiO2/SnS2 APPLICATION IN PHOTOELECTROCHEMICAL DEGRADATION OF PHARMACEUTICAL COMPOUNDS

Pharmaceuticals are known to have a significant impact on aquatic environment causing ecological risk and human health damage. Accordingly, it is important to develop an innovative and practical water treatment technique, which will be able to remove them. Photoelectrochemical oxidation is one of the promising techniques due to its simplicity and combination of photocatalytic and electrochemical process. Additionally, recombination of photogenerated electron/hole pairs that occurs decreases by applying external potential, leading to enhancement in pharmaceutical degradation efficiency. One of the most important photocatalytic candidates is TiO2. Since it is limited to UV-irradiation, significant efforts have been done to extend its absorption into the visible light region through TiO2 doping or TiO2 composite formation. Therefore, the aim of this work was to investigate and compare photoelectrochemical activities of TiO2/SnS2 nano- composite to those of TiO2. The examination was performed using photoelectrochemical techniques in 0.1 mol dm-3 NaCl solution, for degradation of pharmaceuticals such as diclophenac, salicylic acid and memantine hydrochloride. For this purpose, TiO2 and TiO2/SnS2 nano-composite were immobilised on FTO electrodes. Electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) was used to characterize electrode/solution interface in the presence and absence of pharmaceutical compounds. Electrochemical and photoelectrochemical degradation of pharmaceutical was monitored by linear polarisation. The experiments showed that it is possible to degrade pharmaceutical using electrochemical process and to improve degradation using UVirradiation for TiO2 electrode or UV/Vis-irradiation for TiO2/SnS2 electrode.

Pharmaceuticals, photoelectrochemical process, SnS2

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