Rus Florina Stefania

Title : Fabrication of Calcium bismuth oxide catalysts

Abstract:

This paper aims to study new bulk materials with exceptional photocatalytic activity, a key property for next-generation environmentally friendly technologies. The approach relies on the idea to use these materials to support the degradation of toxic pollutants and strong dyes. Catalysis is an important technology in an environmentally friendly, energy-efficient industry because it allows chemical reactions to occur at lower temperatures due to high activity, prevents the formation of harmful waste due to high selectivity, and is sustainable due to the high stability of the catalyst material. Bulk with a crystalline structure based on calcium bismuth oxide was obtained by precipitation method followed by calcination.

The as obtained materials were characterized by X-ray powder diffraction (XRD) which provides a rapid phase identification of a crystalline material and information on unit cell dimensions competed by with Raman Spectroscopy a non-destructive chemical analysis technique which insures expressed details about phase connected with chemical crystalline structure and polymorphy. The FTIR spectra were carried out with a Thermo Scientific Nicolet 6700 FT-IR spectrometer, using KBr pellet technique in order to determine the molecular fingerprint. The thermal behaviour of the sample was evaluated based on thermal analysis (TG-DTA) carried out with a Mettler-Toledo TGA/SDTA851 (heating rate 5 °C/min, air flow 60 mL/min). An evaluation of catalytic activity of catalysts toward a degradation of Rhodamine B (RhB) was studied. The experiments were performed using suspensions of 30 mg catalyst particles continuously mixed with a magnetic stirrer at 500 rpm in the absence of irradiation in 30 mL RhB aqueous solution with an initial concentration of 1.5 mg L⁻¹. The removal of Rhodamine B by calcium bismuth oxide under dark conditions was almost 40% in 4 hours with a calculated rate constant for removal of organic pollutant of 0.002 min^-1.

Audience take-away:

• The scientific audience could use this presentation in order to obtain new or better and deeper insight on the bismuth based materials in form of  ABiO₃ with controllable characteristics and their potential applications.
• The audience will be able to use what they have learned in the evaluation of calcination temperatures on the effect it has on the structural properties of catalysts
• The audience will be able to choose the most suitable temperature for the calcination of their catalysts using the TG analysis.
• Fast development of a new catalyst with a high rate of Rhodamine B removal under dark conditions

Biography:

Florina Rus studied Materials Engineering at the Politehnica University of Timisoara, Romania and graduated as PhD in 2014. During this time she did a short research stage of approximately 8 months in Leibniz Institute for Solid State and Materials Research in Dresden where she gained experience on growing films using pulsed laser deposition technique. She then joined the research Institute for Research and Development in Electrochemistry and Condensed Matter, Timisoara, Romania. She has published more than 25 research articles in Scopus database.