Box-Behnken Design and experimental studies on novel fibrous g-C3N4 towards water splitting and degradation of indigo carmine dye

Graphitic carbon nitride (g-C3N4) is robust and stable metal free polymeric materials that have recently gained interest towards photocatalytic applications. It shows visible-light driven photocatalytic activity with a major drawback of higher recombination rate of charge carriers and moderate oxidation ability. These issues are overcome by structural modifications using facile polymerization of acidized melamine thus controlling the structure of graphitic carbon nitride. The major factors affecting the photocatalytic activity were experimentally optimized and effect of these parameters was evaluated using the Box-Behnken Design of response surface methodology. The fabricated fibrous graphitic carbon nitride (NFgCN) shows a superior activity of 81.0 mu mol g- 1 h-1 hydrogen generation and 99.9 % degradation of indigo carmine (IC) dye in 90 min. The NFgCN shows 5 times higher activity for hydrogen generation compared to the pristine g-C3N4.