Photocatalytic Study of New Immobilized TiO₂Technique Towards Degradation of Reactive Red 4 Dye

Abstract

Abstract. The study on TiO2 for wastewater remediation has gained interest among researchers. However, the application of this photocatalyst is limited due to non-recyclability of conventional TiO2. Thus, immobilization technique has been developed to solve this issue. Hence, a comparison study between two types of immobilized photocatalysts namely titanium dioxide (TiO2) and TiO2 mixed with polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) has been conducted in this work to observe the significant effect of PVA polymer in photocatalysis reaction of reactive red 4 (RR4) dye. Double sided adhesive tape (DSAT) was used as thin layer binder in this immobilization system. The result shows that the photocatalytic performance of TiO2-PVA/DSAT was higher than that of TiO2/DSAT under both normal UV and visible light irradiations due to the conjugated unsaturated polymer from PVA serve as electron donor for TiO2 thus increase the photocatalysis process. Besides, TiO2-PVA/DSAT was also found to possess much better adhesion strength to the support material compared to TiO2/DSAT. Based on the findings, this TiO2 immobilization system is expected to be beneficial in the industrial wastewater treatment. Thus, further study to improve the photocatalytic activity of this immobilized TiO2 will be in our future work.

The Preparation and Characterization of Immobilized TiO2/PEG by Using DSAT as a Support Binder

“…As such, the band gap energy of TiO 2 photocatalyst in TP0 did not change to a visible light active response, and this was similarly observed in Figure 7c where no photodegradation of 12 mg·L −1 MB was observed for TP0 under visible light irradiation. Only decolorization of MB was observed as reported on the adsorption site of the porous surface of TP0 as proven by the adsorption graph in Figure 7d and discussed in our previous study [51]. Unwashed TP2 showed a low photocatalytic degradation of MB dye due to the C-C bond in PEG that makes TP2 become slightly active under the visible light condition.…”

Preparation of Polyaniline/TiO2 Photovoltaic Solar Cell

“…In the contrary, the photoactivity of TiO2 is restricted to ultraviolet (UV) region because of the wide band gap energy [8][9][10][11][12][13][14]. To overcome the band gap issue, researchers made attempts to broaden the optical response of TiO2 to visible light by surface modification, doping with metal or non-metal, dye or semiconductor sensitization [15][16][17].…”

Untitled

“…PVA has great film-forming capacity and useful in immobilization of TiO 2 . Its low market cost is another variable that many analysts utilized this polymer in their work [8].…”