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Research progress on photocatalytic degradation of microplastics by graphitic carbon nitride
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This review systematically examined graphitic carbon nitride (g-C3N4) as a photocatalytic tool for degrading microplastics, identifying hydroxyl radicals, holes, and superoxide radicals as the key reactive species and showing that pH, light intensity, and MP morphology significantly affect degradation efficiency. While still at laboratory scale, photocatalytic degradation offers a chemical pathway to break down persistent microplastics in water—an important complement to physical filtration approaches.
In recent years, the environmental problems caused by microplastics (MPs) as novel pollutants have received widespread attention, and photocatalytic technology can degrade MPs into small molecule compounds such as aldehydes and ketones. Among the existing catalysts, graphitic phase carbon nitride (g-C3N4) shows great potential in degrading pollutants due to its unique properties. In this paper, the structure, preparation method, modification method, mechanism of degradation of MPs and influencing factors of g-C3N4 are systematically reviewed. It is summarized that ·OH, h+, and ·O2− are the main active species in the degradation of MPs by g-C3N4, and the external conditions such as pH, light intensity, and the morphology of MPs themselves can affect the degradation of MPs. However, g-C3N4 photocatalytic degradation of MPs is still only in the laboratory stage at this stage, and problems such as the degradation of MPs in actual water bodies have not been carried out, so how to solve the above problems is the focus of future research in the field of g-C3N4 photocatalytic degradation of MPs.
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