Open Access Conference Proceedings

G-C3N4 is an intensively studied material for photocatalytic applications, mainly for the degradation of pollutants in water and air. The thermal polymerization of suitable precursors (urea, melamine, dicyanamide etc.) is the most often used approach for the g-C3N4 synthesis. In this research, g-C3N4 was prepared by the thermal polymerization of melamine and calcination conditions were tuned using Design of Experiment approach (DOE). Five factors, such as the temperature ramp rate, final temperature, holding time, cooling rate and amount of initial melamine, were preselected and tested on two levels: 3 and 10 °C/min, 500 and 550°C, 0 and 1h, shock and slow cooling, 2.5 and 10 g. A half testing plan including 16 calcination experiments was set using fractional factorial design. The yield of final products of calcination was used as the measured output of the experiments. The photogeradation activity against the model dye acid orange 7 (AO7) was evaluated for selected samples. The results indicated the weight loss of melamine for a given temperature depended mainly on its initial weight and heating rate. The photodegradation activity was higher for the samples calcined at the temperature of 500 °C.

© This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.