Application of Bi2O3/TiO2 heterostructures on glycerol photocatalytic oxidation to chemicals

The aqueous-phase glycerol photocatalytic oxidation under ultraviolet irradiation was studied to reduce the fossil energy or electricity usage. Here, the glycerol is transformed into several valuable products over the new Bi2O3/TiO2 composite heterostructure which was well produced by employing maleic acid as an organic binder. The prepared α-Bi2O3/TiO2 composites revealed higher photocatalytic activity for the conversion of glycerol (88.7%) compared with TiO2 (69.7%) under ultraviolet irradiation at 8 h which could be attributed to their relative positions of the energy bands. Nevertheless, all the Bi2O3/TiO2 heterostructures had the same photocatalytic transformation of glycerol and gave similar distribution of generated valuable products. Moreover, the photocatalytic activity of the β-Bi2O3/TiO2 heterostructure had been compared to those of pure TiO2, α-Bi2O3, β-Bi2O3 and α-Bi2O3/TiO2 for the photooxidation of glycerol under the same conditions.