Abstract:
This research was carried out to recover gold from printed circuit board wastewater using coupled WO3 photocatalysts. The investigated parameters were the ZnO contents coupled with WO3 (2.5 25 wt.%), initial pH of wastewater (7.02 11.2), type of hole scavenger (methanol, ethanol and iso-propanol), hole scavenger concentration (10 30 vol.%) and photocatalyst loading (1.0 2.5 g/l). It was found that the ZnO/WO3 photocatalyst synthesized with 5 wt.% of ZnO (5.0ZW) showed the highest gold recovery of 99.87% within 5 h, at initial pH of wastewater of 11.21, ethanol concentration of 20 vol.%, photocatalyst loading of 2 g/l and light intensity 3.57 mW/cm2. An improved photocatalytic activity of 5.0ZW photocatalyst was attributed to the synergetic effect of oxygen vacancies and the constructed heterojunction which can suppress the rate of electron-hole recombination. Besides, the presence of appropriate band alignment with respect to the reduction potential of gold cyanide-complexes promoted the photocatalytic reaction. The 5.0ZW photocatalyst exhibited a high stability even at 6 cycles.