Carbon Allotropes and Composites

13Carbonaceous Catalysts for Pollutant Degradation

Poonam Kaswan¹, Santimoy Khilari², Ankur Srivastava³, Girijesh Kumar², Pratap K. Chhotaray⁴, Mrituanjay D. Pandey^3* and Kamalakanta Behera^2†

¹ Department of Applied Chemistry (CBFS ASAS), Amity University, Gurugram, Manesar, Panchgaon, Haryana, India

² Department of Chemistry, Faculty of Science, University of Allahabad, Prayagraj, U.P., India

³ Department of Chemistry, Institute of Science, Banaras Hindu University Varanasi, U.P., India

⁴ Department of Chemistry, School of Applied Sciences, Centurian University, Ramachandrapur, Jatni, Odisha, India

Abstract

To enhance the quality of the environment, a lot of studies have been done on carbonaceous materials to develop different architectures and qualities. The development and importance of carbonaceous photocatalysts is briefly highlighted in this chapter, which also includes different semiconductors based on activated carbon, carbon nanotubes, carbon dots, fullerene, graphene, aerogels and carbon sponges, etc. In the present chapter, we have considered two types of strategies to discuss the entitled topic, one is a carbon-based catalyst, and the second is carbonaceous material with other metal composites to enhance the activity. Various difficulties with a metal catalyst, such as limited light adsorption capacity, large band gap energy, and insufficient physicochemical stability, continue to severely restrict photocatalysts for practical uses. To get rid of this, some unique ...