HP-HT Treatment of Hexagonal Boron Nitride for Higher Photocatalytic Degradation of Organic Pollutants

Hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN) solid waste recovered from the high pressure and high temperature (HP-HT) synthesis of cubic boron nitride was used as photocatalyst to study its degradation performance in organic pollutants. Results showed that the main phase of the solid waste was h‑BN and it contained a small amount of impurity phase. The grains were irregular, and the grain size was approximately several micrometers. Compared with commercial h-BN powder, h-BN waste had strong light absorption ability in the whole light range. Under visible-light irradiation, the degradation ability of h-BN waste to organic pollutants was very weak. Adding H 2 O 2 could significantly improve the photocatalytic performance of h-BN waste and basically degrade methyl orange (MO), rhodamine B (RhB), methylene blue (MB) in 30, 60, and 80 min, respectively.