Fundamentals and some applications of photoelectrocatalysis and effective factors on its efficiency: a review

Effluents of a large variety of industries usually contain important quantities of synthetic organic compounds. The discharge of these compounds in the environment causes considerable non-aesthetic pollution and serious health risk factors. Since conventional wastewater treatment plants cannot degrade the majority of these pollutants, powerful methods for the decontamination of dye wastewaters have received increasing attention over the past decade. In this work, fundamentals and main applications of photoelectrocatalysis as one of the most powerful and recent progresses of emerging photoassisted electrochemical treatments with UV irradiation are studied. The effect of various effective factors such as photoanode type, light source and its intensity, pH solution value, type and concentration of supporting electrolyte, type of cathode electrode, to be moving of photoanode or solution, thicknesses of semiconductor film on the electrode surface, and applied potential on the destruction of pollutants is described. Furthermore, various methods used for TiO₂ modification are mentioned. Also, application of photocatalysts except semiconductors is presented for photoelectrocatalytic aims. Finally, application of photoelectrocatalysis in determination of materials as a new method is discussed.