Challenges of organic pollutant photocatalysis by biochar-based catalysts

With the fast development of industrialization and urbanization, large amounts of organic pollutants are released into the natural environment. The efficient elimination of organic pollutants is thereby crucial for environmental pollution treatment and human health. In the last decades, photocatalytic degradation of persistent organic pollutants has attracted multidisciplinary interest because of its simple operation on a large scale. However, the whole processes for the photocatalytic degradation of organic pollutants are still unclear. In this perspective, the contribution of reactive species, the contribution of photocatalysts, the analysis of intermediate products, the charge transfer and fast carrier recombination are discussed on biochar-based photocatalysts.