In 2015, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development as a roadmap for international cooperation on sustainable development. Today, geopolitical developments make it essential to redouble efforts and address challenges for the rapid prototyping of advanced, environmentally friendly, low-cost and highly efficient photochemical devices.
One of the most promising technologies for water treatment today is photocatalytic membrane reactors (PMRs) for the immobilisation of nanometric semiconductors; however, their engineering is still not solved. The challenge is related to the fabrication of porous photoactive membranes adapted to PMR configurations. In this sense, the project focuses on the creation of prototypes of porous photoactive membranes for their implementation in PMRs by means of binder jetting (BJ) additive manufacturing (AM) technology using tailored granules as feedstock. In this sense, spray-drying suspensions of a mixture of nanopowders of photocatalytic species and co-catalysts results in a unique technology to adapt the granules to the BJ requirements of size and flowability.
Previous studies have demonstrated the possibility of obtaining photocatalysts with improved photocatalytic activity from powders with controlled morphology by spray-drying, using naturally abundant ceramic semiconductors such as Al2O3, TiO2, CuO or C by creating high value-added mixed structures. Therefore, the project focuses on the evaluation of different combined granules (Al2O3-TiO2 and C-TiO2) for the development of suitable membranes for implementation in PMRs and their study in the photocatalytic degradation of Chemical Oxygen Demand (COD) indicators such as methyl orange.