Browsing by Author "Salazar Canas, Javier Antoni"

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    Cyanobacterial pigment adsorbed on TiO2 thin films
    (2024) Diaz-Uribe, Carlos; Duran, Freider; Arcon, Amado; Vallejo, William; Salazar Canas, Javier Antoni; Schott Verdugo, Eduardo Enrique; Zarate, Ximena
    The rise in toxicity related to cyanobacterial bloom in freshwater is a current problem that perturbs the trophic chain and risks the ecosystems and human health. Currently, the use of biomass as a potential source of value-added bio-products is an important goal to be achieved in the scope of a sustainable bio-economy. Thus, taking advantage of such bacteria is needed. In the present work, we studied the use of cyanobacterial biomass coming from the Malambo swamp in Colombia as a source of Phycocyanobilin (C-PC) and Chlorophyll-a (Chla) which were used as natural pigments for TiO2 thin films. The concentration obtained of C-PC and Chla extracted were 215 μg/mL and 0.417 μg/mL, respectively. We modeled the natural dye adsorption kinetics on TiO2 thin films through three different models. The Langmuir model showed the best fitting, indicating that the pigment extracted from cyanobacterial biomass can sensitize thin TiO2 film through the formation of a monolayer. Furthermore, the TiO2 films present higher adsorption of C-PC (25.8 mg/g) than Chla (23.3 mg/g). Finally, the adsorption modes were assessed using periodic DFT approximations, which is a remarkable method for studying the structure and properties of solid materials. In terms of binding energies, it was found that the dye shows the strongest interaction with TiO2 through the titanium atom. Thus, the main contribution of this work is directed to explore in deep the natural dye adsorption on TiO2 from both experimental and computational point of view.
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    Study of methylene blue removal and photocatalytic degradation on zirconia thin films modified with Mn-Anderson polyoxometalates
    (2024) Florez, Jiress; Díaz Uribe, Carlos; Vallejo, William; Duran, Freider; Puello, Esneyder; Salazar Canas, Javier Antoni; Zarate, Ximena; Schott Verdugo, Eduardo Enrique
    Recalcitrant pollutants are challenging to degrade during water treatment processes. Methylene blue (MB), a cationic dye, is particularly resistant to degradation and is environmentally persistent. Heterogeneous photocatalysis has emerged as a suitable strategy for removing such pollutants from water. In this work, ZrO2 thin films were modified with Anderson-type Mn-polyoxometalate (MnPOM) ((NH4)3[MnMo6O24H6]), and the efficiency of MB removal from water was studied. ZrO2 was synthesized by a sol-gel method, with thin films deposited using the doctor blade method, and ZrO2 thin films were modified using chemisorption method. The synthesized materials were characterized using SEM, EDX, UV-Vis diffuse reflectance spectroscopy and FTIR. The adsorption kinetics and isotherms for MB were studied for both bare ZrO2 and ZrO2/MnPOM composites. Optical characterization showed a band gap energy of 4.02 eV for bare ZrO2, while the ZrO2/MnPOM composite exhibited a band gap of 3.7 eV. Furthermore, ZrO2 showed lower MB removal capacity (similar to 8%) than ZrO2/MnPOM thin films (similar to 29%). The isothermal adsorption studies indicated that MB adsorption onto both bare ZrO2 and ZrO2/MnPOM followed the Langmuir adsorption model (qm = 20.6 mg g-1 for ZrO2 and qm = 62.9 mg g-1 for ZrO2/MnPOM). Furthermore, the adsorption kinetics of MB were well described by a pseudo-second-order model. Photocatalytic testing under UV irradiation showed an apparent rate constant (kap) of 2 x 10-3 min-1 for bare ZrO2 and a value of kap 5.4 x 10-3 min-1 for ZrO2/MnPOM after 100 minutes. TD-DFT calculations revealed an LMCT interaction between the ZrO2 nanoparticle and the MnPOM, which likely contributes to the enhanced photocatalytic activity of the ZrO2/MnPOM composite.