Engineering Commons^™

A Comprehensive Study Of Cd(Ii) Removal From Aqueous Solution Via Adsorption And Solar Photocatalysis, Samindika Athapaththu

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

As the increase in industrial technology continue to progress, it results in the increase in heavy metal pollution, creating harmful effects on humans, plants, and animals. Since toxic metals do not degrade easily, they accumulate over time, posing greater danger to living organisms. Removal of these heavy metals is therefore, of great importance. Though many research studies successfully utilized UV photocatalysis with TiO₂ catalyst for the removal of Cd²⁺, none have performed the photoreduction of Cd²⁺ under visible light using eosin-y dye-sensitized TiO₂. The objective of the present research is to study the photocatalytic …

Self-Cleaning Polyurethane And Polyester Coatings, Yixing Tang

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Self-cleaning titanium dioxide (TiO₂) based polyurethane and polyester nanocomposites were synthesized, characterized and tested in this thesis. A monomer functionalization method (“grafting from” polymerization) was used for synthesizing both novel nano-TiO₂ coordinated polyurethanes (nano-TiO₂-PU) and nano-TiO₂/polyester nanocomposites. This technique provides the advantage of directly attaching nanoparticles to the polymer backbone.

For polyurethane synthesis, two different methods (one-shot and pre-polymer) were explored. Using several characterization techniques, product from the pre-polymer method showed better mechanical properties; therefore, the pre-polymer method was chosen for subsequent nano-TiO₂-PU synthesis. In the nano-TiO₂-PU synthesis, the …