Water and atmospheric pollution is a major issue affecting environment and health. Semiconductor-based photocatalysis is a well-known and efficient process for achieving water and air depollution, with very limited rejects in the environment. Zinc oxide (ZnO), as a wide-bandgap metallic oxide, is an excellent photocatalyst, able to mineralize a large scale of organic pollutants in water, under UV irradiation, that can be enlarged to visible range by doping nontoxic elements such as Ag and Fe. With high surface/volume ratio, the ZnO nanostructures have been shown to be prominent photocatalyst candidates with enhanced photocatalytic efficiency owing to the facts that they are low-cost, non-toxic, and can be produced with easy and controllable synthesis. Thus, ZnO nanostructures-based photocatalysis can be considered as an eco-friendly and sustainable process. This work presents the photocatalytic activity of ZnO nanostructures (NSs) grown on different substrates. The photocatalysis has been carried out both under classic mode and micro-fluidic mode. All tests shown the notable photocatalytic efficiency of ZnO NSs with remarkable results obtained from ZnO-NSs-integrated microfluidic reactor, which exhibited an important enhancement of photocatalytic activity by reducing drastically the photodegradation time. UV-visible spectrometry and high-performance liquid chromatography coupled with mass spectrometry (HPLC-MS) are simultaneously used to follow real-time information giving both the photodegradation efficiency and the degradation mechanism of the organic dye methylene blue. By scaling-up an innovative and low-cost hydrothermal direct growth synthesis, a few square meters paved with tiling and bitumen road were easily produced in order to evaluate their photocatalytic activity at large scale under solar lamp in a climatic chamber (Sense-City, 400m2, 3200 m3) to reflect real atmospheric air purification situations. Observations provide insights into their ability to simultaneously remove various pollutants from a real car exhaust (O3, COX, NOX, VOCs) and their durability.
Yamin Leprince-Wang is Full Professor at the Gustave Eiffel University (UGE), France, where she is Head of the Materials Science & Engineering Master’s degree course. Her main research interest consists of synthesis and characterization of oxide nanomaterials and their applications in energy and environment fields, such as nanogenerator of electricity, solar cells, chemical sensors, and water & air purification using photocatalysis process. She received B.S. degree from Zhejiang University in China (1985), M.S. and PhD degrees from Sorbonne Université (ex. Pierre and Marie Curie University - Paris VI) in France in 1991 and 1995, respectively; then joined UGE (ex. UPEM) in 1995. Chief of the Material Science Department between 2006-2010, and leader of the Laboratoire de Physique des Matériaux Divisés & Interfaces (LPMDI, UMR CNRS) between 2008-2014, she co-authored more than 100 peer reviewed papers, 2 books, and 3 patents.
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