Preparation of a novel recyclable cocatalyst wool–Pd for enhancement of photocatalytic H2 evolution on CdS

In recent years, the research of photocatalyst splitting of water to hydrogen by using semiconductor has been developed rapidly. CdS are attractive photocatalytic materials for the conversion of solar energy into chemical energy under visible-light irradiation. In this paper, a kind of recyclable cocatalyst that the wool supported palladium cocatalyst was synthetized and characterized by X-ray diffraction, diffuse reflectance UV–vis spectroscopy, energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDX), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopic (XPS) studies and transmission electron microscopy (TEM). The optimal weight percentage of wool–Pd was found to be 3.0 wt %, which resulted in a high visible-light photocatalytic average H2-production rate of 1555 μ mol/h. It showed that the recycled cocatalyst wool–Pd could improve the efficiency of photocatalytic hydrogen production because of introducing oxidation cocatalyst PdS and reduction cocatalyst Pd. This study indicated that the prepared recyclable cocatalyst wool–Pd not only could improve the efficiency of photocatalytic hydrogen production, but also eco-friendly and recyclable.