Lotus Leaf-Inspired Hydrothermal Synthesis of Composite Nanoparticles and Application for Photocatalytic Oil Denitrification.

The application of lipophilic composite nanoparticle photocatalysts to denitrification is an important issue, because the lipophilic catalyst exhibits excellent performance compared to other photocatalysis. Taking inspiration from the super-hydrophobic self-cleaning ability of lotus leaf, we reported here that BiVO4–TiO2-570/sepiolite nanosheet composites were prepared by a facile hydrothermal method. The photo-generated carriers in the heterojunction can be separated efficiently and rapidly under the electric field formed in the space charge region to enhance the catalytic activity and lifetime. In this paper, we organically modified the catalyst by adding silane coupling agent (KH-570), which not only reduces the specific surface energy of the catalyst, but also realizes the lipophilicity by constructing the micro-nano structure, so that it is uniformly dispersed in the oil. Meanwhile, using inexpensive nano-sepiolite as a carrier to provide an electron transport medium, accelerate hole-electron separation and increase specific surface area. The catalytic performance of the lipophilic composite nanoparticles was demonstrated by the photocatalytic degradation rate of pyridine contained in simulation oil. The experiment results shows that modified super-lipophilic nanoparticles was obviously higher than that of pure TiO2, which might provide a simple and environmentally friendly approach for the photocatalytic degradation of oil nitrides. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]