The effect of acidified graphite carbon nitride on the removal of pollutants by coupling filtration and photocatalysis

Abstract Graphite carbon nitride (gCN) has attracted extensive attention due to excellent 2D structure and photocatalytic performance since it was discovered. In this work, the novel membrane was fabricated with acidified graphite carbon nitrogen (aCN) as a selective layer and dopamine (DA) as a cushion layer on a polysulfone (PS) membrane. The removal effect of aCN membrane on methyl blue and ciprofloxacin has improved with the excellent photocatalytic property of aCN. Meanwhile, SEM, XRD, FTIR spectra and DLS was performed to investigate the morphology, structure and property of the obtained membranes. The results showed that dopamine not only provided adhesion for aCN, but also enhanced photoelectron transfer. The membrane with optimized conditions aided by the structure and photocatalytic performance of aCN exhibited great removal rates for both methyl blue (97.2%) and ciprofloxacin (99.4%). The above experiments proved the advantages of aCN in the removal of dyes and antibiotics in coupling filtration and photocatalysis.