Design and development of TiO2-Fe0 nanoparticle-immobilized nanofibrous mat for photocatalytic degradation of hazardous water pollutants

Abstract

This study introduces, a titanium dioxide (TiO2) and zerovalent iron (Fe0) nanoparticles immobilized electrospun poly (acrylic acid)/poly (vinyl alcohol) (PAA/PVA) nanofibrous mat for photocatalytic degradation of hazardous water pollutant. For that, PAA/PVA nanofibrous mat was prepared by electrospinning followed by crosslinking and immobilization/incorporation of TiO2 and Fe0 nanoparticles through Layer-by-Layer (LbL) self-assembly method. The obtained PAA/PVA–TiO2 and PAA/PVA–TiO2–Fe0 was fully characterized by scanning electron microscopy (SEM), FTIR, TGA and porosity analysis. The results showed successful immobilization of both (TiO2 and Fe0) nanoparticles on the nanofibrous mat with uniform distribution. The latter exhibited catalytic activity towards the degradation of Methyl Blue (MB) and Brilliant Green (BG) dyes separately and mixed in the presence of UV light. UV–Vis spectroscopic analysis was used to monitor and quantitative analysis of the degradation. It has been found that high photocatalytic activity of the functional nanofibrous mats has been observed. The fastest conversion rate reached to 99.2% in 20 min at a rate constant of 0.0847/min providing adequate reusability of the nanofiber mats up to four consecutive cycles. A mechanism of the photocatalytic activities has been proposed by referring to the above results. The results opened a promising prospect for using nanofibrous based effective photocatalyst for environmental application.