Aqueous Phase Photodegradation Of Rhodamine B And P-nitrophenol Desctruction Using Titania Based Nanocomposites

¹Department of Chemistry, University of Gour Banga, Malda 732103, West Bengal, India

²Department of Chemistry, West Bengal State University, Barasat, Kolkata 700126, West Bengal, India

Adv. Mater. Lett., 2015, 6 (10), pp 867-873

DOI: 10.5185/amlett.2015.5858

Publication Date (Web): Sep 18, 2015

Copyright © IAAM-VBRI Press

E-mail: tghorai@ugb.ac.in, tanmayghorai66@gmail.com

Abstract

Heterogeneous photocatalysts offer great potential for converting photon energy into chemical energy for decomposition and destruction of organic contaminants from organic molecules i.e. Rhodamine B (RhB) and p-nitophenol (p-NP) under UV light. The titania based novel M_xNb_xTi_1-2xO_2-x/2 (M = Cr, Fe; x = 0.01-0.2) was prepared by tetra and tri-podal amine type binder with iron or chromium support using sol–gel method followed by calcination at 150 ^oC in an auto generated pressure. The photodegradation performance of the optimized catalyst was compared with synthesized nano-compositions, P-25 titania with RhB and p-NP. The particle sizes, surface area, mesopore sizes of Cr_xNb_xTi_1-2xO_2-x/2 (x = 0.01) (CNT1) and Fe_xNb_xTi_1-2xO_2-x/2 (x = 0.01) (FNT1) are 12±1 and 10±2 nm, S_BET=162 and 145 m²g⁻¹, 4.9 and 4-5 nm, respectively. The energy band gap of CNT1, FNT1 and NT was found to be 1.85, 2.06 and 2.1 eV, respectively. The importance of CNT1 powders is that it shows good photocatalytic activity for the degradation of Rhodamine B (RhB) within only 180 min and the importance of FNT1 powders is that it reduces the p-NP to p-aminophenol using a little bit of NaBH₄ (0.054 g) within 10 min as compared to pure anatase TiO₂ and other compositions of M_xNb_xTi_1-2xO_2-x/2 (M = Cr, Fe).

Keywords

Titanium dioxide, sol-gel synthesis, nano-composites, RhB,p-NP.