Activated carbon modified titanium dioxide/bismuth trioxide adsorbent: One-pot synthesis, high removal efficiency of organic pollutants, and good recyclability.

Considerable endeavors have focused on tightly combining adsorption with photocatalysis in designing composite materials for environmental pollution treatment. Recent advances in coupling titanium dioxide/bismuth trioxide (TiO2/Bi2O3) with activated carbon (AC) show significantly enhanced photocatalytic performance but face critical limitations including low adsorption capacity and multi-step synthesis. In this work, we introduce a one-pot synthesis of activated carbon modified TiO2/Bi2O3 composite materials (TiO2/Bi2O3/AC). Thanks to the integrated adsorbent/photocatalyst system, TiO2/Bi2O3/AC shows a drastically enhanced removal efficiency for sulfamethazine (>81%), far beyond the corresponding value of the reported AC/TiO2/Bi2O3 adsorbent (<40%). Notably, the removal rates of other typical pollutants including tetracyclines, methyl orange, and rhodamine B are as high as >98%. Furthermore, TiO2/Bi2O3/AC obtains >80% of its adsorption rate for the fifth cycle after simple photo-regeneration without any other post-treatments. Kinetic analysis and photoelectric characterization are carried out to provide insight into adsorption mechanism. Therefore, this work demonstrates a considerable potential to design and construct other multifunctional adsorbents with advanced performance.