Investigation of TiO2/zeolite photocatalytic activity for Safranin dye removal of aqueous solution

Abstract

Aims: This study was aimed to determine the TiO2/zeolite photocatalytic activity for removing red Safranin dye form aqueous phase. Materials and Methods: In this study, TiO2 nanoparticles were produced using sol-gel method and 2.5 ml sol-gel was coated on 1.2222 g of zeolite. X-ray diffraction (XRD) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) were applied to specify the structure and morphology of TiO2 nanoparticles. The effect of TiO2 coating on zeolite, ultraviolet (UV) radiation intensity, initial concentration of dye and the type of photocatalyst substrate (fixed and moving) on photocatalytic process was investigated. Results: According to XRD results, the TiO2 nanoparticles had two phases including anatase (80.5%) and rutile (19.5%). The uniformity of nanoparticles was obvious in the SEM images. The removal efficiency of TiO2 coated on zeolite was higher than TiO2 photocatalysis with increasing UV radiation intensity from 2.4 w/m2 to 3.9 w/m2, the photocatalytic efficiency was also enhanced. The removal efficiency decreased from 91.61% to 77.91% by increasing the red Safranin dye concentration from 10 mg/L to 50 mg/L. The moving bed of TiO2/zeolite photocatalyst had a higher efficiency than the fixed bed. Conclusion: In over all, the TiO2/zeolite photocatalyst was much more effective than TiO2 photocatalyst for Safranin dye removal from the aqueous phase. With increasing UV radiation intensity and decreasing dye concentration photocatalytic efficiency, was improved. TiO2/zeolite photocatalyst with fixed bed is recommended to be used in water treatment. The most important problem of using moving-bed TiO2/zeolite photocatalyst in the water treatment is opacity. Copyright: © 2015 Masoud R. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.