Photocatalysis: An Environmental Approach

Sun lights the world, Water survives the life! Water is indispensable source of life. Safe drinking water is the necessity of every human being and nation for its sustainable economic growth. In today’s life, environmental pollution has far reaching negative consequences in the lives of human beings. Degradation of pollutants has detrimental belongings on the well-being of mankind which is the most important issue in today’s scientific world. To realize such type of challenge, many processes are being addressed to enable improved disinfection, decontamination, reuse of water and exploring novel desalination methods to work in concert to preserve the environment and reduce water scarcity in the world. This work is intended to reveal the detoxification of contaminants present in wastewater using a specially designed photoelectrochemical detoxification reactor by zinc oxide (ZnO), Ga and N doped ZnO photocatalyst. The efforts will be made to obtain the photocatalytic reactions of organic impurities with acceptable reaction kinetics under solar illumination. The correlation of COD, TOC and BOD measurements for extent of the degree of mineralization has been studied.