Study On TiO₂/Ti-Cu₂O/Cu Based Photocatalytic Fuel Cell

Direct discharging great quantities of hazardous materials intowater-body not only causes serious ecological disruption andenvironmental pollution but also threatens public health. It’s difficult fortraditional wastewater treatment method like biological method to disposethose pollutants with high efficiency especially for refractory materials.Besides, it’s also a waste of energy sources as wastewater contains highlevel of chemical energy. In this paper, a novel dual photoelectrodephotocatalytic fuel cell (PFC) was designed for hazardous organicstreatment with simultaneous electricity generation. Then the performanceof PFC was investigated.TiO2nanotube arrays of different sizes were fabricated byanodization of Ti film in HF aqueous and citric acid solution with F-.Cu2O nanowire film was synthesized via wet chemical method. Bothachieved photoelectrodes were characterized by SEM. The followingexperiments proved that PFC based on TNA photoanode and Cu2O/Cuphotocathode was of high cell performance, the longer the nanotube ofTNA is, the greater short circuit current density (Jsc) and maximum poweroutput density (JVmax) were obtained. Parameters including electrolyte, pH value, substrate and lightintensity were studied to improve PFC system performance. The resultsshowed that in0.05M glucose solution with electrolyte of0.10Mphosphate buffered saline, a Jscof0.24mA cm-2, JVmaxof0.44×10-4Wcm-2was achieved when PFC was illuminated under100mW cm-2simulated solar light.Methyl orange, methylene blue and Congo red were selected asrepresents of azo dyes to test the degradation efficiency, TOC removalperformance and also sustainability of PFC system. According to theresults, under irradiation of100mW cm-2simulated solar light,67%,88%and63%of methyl orange, methylene blue and Congo red weredecolorized by PFC system in8h with reaction rate of0.1356h-1,0.2708h-1,0.1207h-1. And at most38%TOC of methylene blue was removedunder1cm-2solar light irradiation. Cu2O nanowires film was also provedto have a good sustainability during the photodegradation.