Introduction, basic principles, mechanism, and challenges of photocatalysis

Abstract Photocatalysis promises to address significant challenges associated with inexhaustible sources of energy like sunlight to power the activities on Earth. There is increasing interest of photocatalysis from scientists because of its potential benefits, mainly the low cost and high efficiency, compared with other methods. Rapid development in photocatalysis is due to its wide scope of industrial applications having the potential of rectifying energy and environmental issues such as organic pollutants’ degradation from wastewater, production of hydrogen, air and water purification, antibacterial activity, production of renewable fuels, and organic syntheses. This chapter provides details of photocatalytic processes with basic principles, its mechanism, advantages, and challenges along with the effect of operating parameters on photocatalysis. Furthermore, it also discusses different sources of wastewater and different wastewater treatment methods along with photocatalytic materials and its role in wastewater treatment.