Optimization of photocatalytic degradation of polybrominated diphenyl ether on trimetallic oxide Cu/Ni/TiO2/PVC catalyst using response surface methodology method

Polybrominated diphenyl ether (PBDEs) are widely spread in the environment which posing elevated potential risks triggers world's attention due to their global distribution and accumulation in the environment and have been found to be a class of contaminants of concern. The present study involves the photocatalytic degradation of tetra (BDE-47), penta (BDE-99, BDE-100) and hexaBDEs (BDE-153, BDE-154) as the most utilized compounds in aqueous solution. The results analysed by gas chromatography-electron capture detector (GC-ECD) found that the degradation of PBDEs under UV light irradiation using the potential trimetallic oxide Cu/Ni-10/TiO2 photocatalyst on the immobilized PVC underwent efficient degradation. The potential catalysts then were characterized using various physicochemical methods of X-ray diffraction (XRD), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), photoluminescence (PL), and diffuse reflectance ultraviolet visible (DR-UV Vis). Further optimization on the three critical parameters (TiO2 loading, calcination temperature and catalyst dosage) for PBDE degradation (BDE-47) were investigated using Box-Behnken experimental design. The optimized data obtained via BBD have found that the TiO2 loading (83 wt%, F-value = 33.60) is the most significant effective factor, followed by calcination temperature (800 degrees C, F-value = 10.18) and catalyst dosage (20 mg, F-value = 6.25) by giving 64.63% degradation of BDE-47 while the regression analysis was found to be as a satisfactory correlation between the experimental data and predicted values with R-2 value of 0.9671 and Adj R-2 of 0.9247. Interestingly, the potential photo catalyst of CuNi10Ti/PVC (5:10:85) demonstrated good activity which is suitable for industrial application. (C) 2016 Taiwan Institute of Chemical Engineers. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.