Preparation and photocatalytic activity of BiOCl catalyst

The BiOCl powders prepared by the hydrolysis method were investigated with the X-ray diffractometry (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and differential thermal analysis (TG-DTA). The results show that the powders are of the tetragonal primitive crystal structure, composed of homogeneous particles of fine ferrite plates, and stable in the temperature range of 40-600 °C. In addition, the photocatalytic activity of BiOCl powders was evaluated by methyl orange (MO) in aqueous solution illuminated by xenon-lamp, and the effect of the BiOCl amount on the photocatalytic activity was investigated. Moreover, the photocatalytic properties of BiOCl and TiO2-P25 were also compared. The results show that the favorite amount of BiOCl powders is 1.0 g/L for the MO degradationand the photocatalytic activity of the BiOCl catalyst is comparable to the TiO2-P25 catalyst under the same experiment condition.