Abstract
In this study gold nanoparticles loaded mesoporous TiO2 (Titania) photocatalyst for mineralization of ibuprofen (IBP) pharmaceutical pollutant has been investigated in aqueous heterogeneous suspension. A Box-Behnken Design (BBD) on Response Surface Methodology (RSM) based on a three variables-model with three levels was used to optimize the photocatalytic process. The interaction effects of wavelength irradiation, IBP concentration and metal supported on Titania concentration on the mineralization of pharmaceutical pollutant were analyzed. IBP mineralization efficiency was modeled by a polynomial regression with a coefficient of determination R2 equal to 0.9974. An optimum efficiency of IBP mineralization of 98.50 % was achieved at optimized experimental conditions of wavelength irradiation equal to 366 nm, and 29.46 mg.L−1 as a value of IBP concentration and a metal concentration of 0.5 wt%. Overall, the results indicate that gold nanoparticles supported on mesoporous Titania at low concentration (0.5Au-TiO2) have a very interesting performance and exhibit good conditions as a photodriven catalyst for mineralization of pharmaceutical pollutant in wastewater.
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