Abstracts Book - IMRC 2018

• SF5-O026 Invited Talk
ON THE ROLE OF SACRIFICIAL AGENT METHANOL AND SULFITE
IONS DURING THE 2-NITROPHENOL TO 2-AMINOPHENOL
PHOTOCATALYTIC REDUCTION
Ricardo Gómez 1 , Diana Guerrero 1 , Próspero Acevedo Peña 2 , David Ramírez Ortega 1
1 Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana, Química, Mexico. 2 Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y
Tecnologia - CONACYT, Materiales, Mexico.
For the improvement of the photocatalytic activity sacrificial agents are usually
used. The role of these agents is generally related to their effect in the charge
separation of the e-h generated during the irradiation of a semiconductor.
Methanol and sulfites are the most common used as sacrificial agents. However,
few attempts are reported to study the role of two agents at the same time. With
this purpose in this work the role of each one methanol and sulfite ions agents
is reported for the 4-nitrophenol photoreduction on TiO 2 –ZrO 2 heterojunction
photocatalysts. The results showed synergetic effect when bots sacrificial agents
are used, the methanol acts as hole scavenger while sulfite acts as a OH radical
captor: in both cases the charge separation is improved as well as the
photoactivity for the 2-nitrophenol reduction to 4-amminophenol. The
semiconductors were characterized by means of XRD, BET specific areas, UV-Vis
spectroscopy and electrochemical determinations.
Acknowledgment:
Diana Guerrero Araque acknowledment to CONACYT for the scolarship.
Keywords: photocatalysis, titania-zirconia, photoreduction
Presenting authors email: gomr@xanum.uam.mx