Enhanced Photoredox Activity of BiVO4/Prussian Blue Nanocomposites for Efficient Pollutant Removal from Aqueous Media under Low-Cost LEDs Illumination
, Leonardo Marchiori 2, Elias Paiva Ferreira-Neto 3, Heberton Wender 4, Rashida Parveen 5, Mohammad Muneeb 1, Bianca Oliveira Mattos 6, Ubirajara Pereira Rodrigues-Filho 6, Sidney José Lima Ribeiro 2 and Sajjad Ullah 1,*Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
In this paper, the author proposed a method for enhancement of pollutant removal efficiency by photocatalytic of BiVO4 that underwent surface modification with Prussian Blue. The materials showed an improvement of absorbance at 700 nm as expected with the presence of PB. BV/PB showed an excellent photo degradation of MB when H_2 O_2 is introduced. Furthermore, photoreduction of Cr(IV) by BV-PB3 also showed significant improvement in comparison to that of pristine BV.
The compound was prepared by photo-deposition combining with co-precipitation to obtain BV/PB. The author mentioned that there is no isolation PB particles, however, since the method of collection was centrifugation and there is no mention of the study of supernatant, the best the authors can say is the obtained product does not contain isolated PB particles.
The electron transfer mechanism of PB is dependent on the alkali situated in the tetrahedral sites. However, due to the small amount of PB, this is probably hard to detect.
Since PB and PW have distinctively different colors, the change in color upon deposition onto BV as well as during reduction of pollutant agents should be addressed.
There are a few unconventional use of English in the paper (use of casual English) that needs to be changed.
Figure 6 has a different background color in comparison to other figures.
In conclusion, the paper is of good quality and can be accepted after minor improvement.
Author Response
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Reviewer 2 Report
Please see the attachment for comments.
Comments for author File: Comments.pdf
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Reviewer 3 Report
The authors constructed a BiVO4 and Prussian Blue nanocomposite for photolytically reducing Cr(IV) and oxidizing dye in water under LED illumination. Their study was comprehensive and the data was abundant, I suggest it could be published after some revisions.
1. Introduction, there lacked some discussions about LED photocatalysis, maybe the authors could refer the following paper: 10.20964/2020.09.51, 10.1016/j.cclet.2019.09.051
2. Why the authors did not determine the BET for the BV and prepared PB materials?
3. Did the authors repeat the MB and Cr(IV) removal tests? I did not see the error bars.
4. About the mechanism, only discussions, it needs some experiments, such as radical scavenging.
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
The author has almost revised it according to the comments of the reviewer, and it is recommended to accept it.
