Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) are one of the major pollutants present in the petrochemical industrial effluents. These VOCs have high vapor pressure, which makes it to be dispersed into the atmosphere easily. Chlorobenzene is one such VOC, which has an ability to cause adverse impacts on human health by damaging the central nervous systems. The available treatment methods are unable to effectively treat such VOCs in environment. Photocatalytic degradation is the effective and economical methods, which are being used for the treatment of such pollutants. ZnO is one of the widely accepted photocatalyst, but it has a limitation of wide band-gap energy utilization. This paper mainly investigates the preparation of metal-doped ZnO nanoparticles using solgel technique and its application for the degradation of chlorobenzene in an aqueous media under different light sources. Among the modified ZnO nanoparticles prepared (Ag/ZnO, Cd/ZnO and Pb/ZnO), Pb/ZnO was found to be very effective in the degradation of chlorobenzene and achieved up to 100% within a short duration (< 120 min). The Pb/ZnO was also used as a photocatalyst in a vertical continuous photoreactor for the photodegradation of chlorobenzene using LED light.

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用于光催化降解氯苯的改性ZnO纳米粒子的制备

挥发性有机化合物（VOC）是石化工业废水中存在的主要污染物之一。这些挥发性有机化合物的蒸气压高，因此很容易分散到大气中。氯苯就是这样一种挥发性有机化合物，它具有通过破坏中枢神经系统而对人体健康产生不利影响的能力。现有的处理方法无法有效地处理环境中的此类VOC。光催化降解是一种有效且经济的方法，正在用于处理此类污染物。ZnO是被广泛接受的光催化剂之一，但是它具有宽带隙能量利用的局限性。本文主要研究了使用溶胶凝胶技术制备金属掺杂的ZnO纳米颗粒及其在不同光源下水介质中降解氯苯的应用。在制备的改性ZnO纳米颗粒（Ag / ZnO，Cd / ZnO和Pb / ZnO）中，发现Pb / ZnO对氯苯的降解非常有效，并在短时间内（<120分钟）达到了100％。Pb / ZnO还用作垂直连续光反应器中的光催化剂，用于使用LED光对氯苯进行光降解。