Synthesis of AgCl/Ag3PO4 Composite Photocatalysts and Study on Photodegradation Activity Based on a Continuous Reactor

: Novel AgCl/Ag3 PO4 photocatalysts were synthesized by a simple precipitation method, in which AgCl was coated onto Ag3 PO4 particles, as uncovered by X-ray diffractometry, transmission electron microscopy and ultraviolet-visible spectrometry. Different from previous research on photocatalytic degradation, we studied the performance of methyl orange photodegradation on a small continuous flow reactor. The highest degradation activity of 97% was achieved by the 2 wt.% AgCl/Ag3 PO4 after 8 min of visible light irradiation, while pure Ag3 PO4 degraded only 71% methyl orange under same conditions. The degradation rate constant of the 2 wt.% AgCl/Ag3 PO4 was 1.36 times higher than that of pure Ag3 PO4 . The AgCl/Ag3 PO4 maintained high photocatalytic activity after five cycles, without any significant decrease.