Title : Photocatalysis: A Green Chemical Pathway
Abstract:
World is facing three major problems such as scarcity of portable water, global warming and acute shortage of energy. Water and air are being polluted at an ever increasing pace, increasing industrialization and transportation supported by exponential increasing population. Although different methods are there to solve these problems but every technique has some or the other disadvantages. There is an urgent demand to develop some eco-friendly route to solve these problems and here, photocatalysis enters the scene. Photocatalysis provides electron as a reductant and hole as an oxidant, simultaneously upon excitation. These excitons (e––h+) can be used for reducing and oxidizing environmental contaminants. If a proper modification of the photocatalyst is done to check the recombination of e– and h+, then photocatalysis can degrade water and air pollutants efficiently giving better quality of water and air. The major culprit of global warming is considered to be carbon dioxide. It can be reduced by photocatalytic route to some value added fuels, which can be further used to generate other forms of energy such as electricity and heat. Hydrogen has been predicted as the fuel of future, which can solve the problem of energy scarcity taking care of environmental pollution also. These three important aspects will be discussed.
Audience take away:
Audience will know the advantages of photocatalysis and its application in combating against polluted water, photoreduction of carbon dioxide and hydrogen generation using a green chemical route, which is a need of the day.
