Development of efficiency improved polymer-modified TiO2 for the photocatalytic degradation of an organic dye from wastewater environment

Murugan Sangareswari,Mariappan Meenakshi Sundaram

doi:10.1007/s13201-015-0351-6

Abstract

In this study, the photocatalytic activity of polypyrrole-TiO2 nanocomposite was studied experimentally for the degradation of methylene blue (MB) dye under simulating solar light irradiation. To improve the photocatalytic activity of TiO2 under sunlight irradiation, conducting polymers such as polypyrrole (PPy) and its derivatives are generally used as photosensitizers. The PPy-TiO2 nanocomposite was prepared by the chemical oxidative polymerization method. The prepared nanocomposite showed better photocatalytic activity than bare TiO2 under sunlight irradiation for the degradation of MB dye. The prepared nanocomposite was subjected to characterization techniques such as SEM-EDAX, FT-IR, UV-DRS, XRD, TGA and PL spectral analysis. Different influencing operating parameters like initial concentration of dye, irradiation time, pH and amount of PPy-TiO2 nanocomposite used have also been studied. The optical density of the dye degradation was measured by UV–Visible spectrophotometer. The repeatability of photocatalytic activity was also tested. A plausible mechanism was proposed and discussed on the basis of experimental results.

Highlights

In current years, pollution from dye wastewater has become a severe ecological problem due to the enormous and increasing uses of a variety of dyes (Kangwansupamonkon et al 2010), When these compounds are discharged to the major water bodies without any previous treatment, they can cause disaster to the ecological equilibrium in the environment as these molecules have carcinogenic and mutagenic properties in the direction of water organisms and produce treat to a human being at the end of these food chains (Muthirulan et al 2012a, b)
Scheme 1 Synthesis of PPyTiO2 nanocomposite by chemical oxidative polymerization method surface morphology of the prepared PPy-TiO2 nanocomposite was examined by SEM-EDAX
These results indicated that PPy-TiO2 nanocomposites photocatalyst showed a high efficiency for the photocatalytic degradation of methylene blue (MB) in the presence of solar light irradiation than TiO2

Summary

Introduction

Pollution from dye wastewater has become a severe ecological problem due to the enormous and increasing uses of a variety of dyes (Kangwansupamonkon et al 2010), When these compounds are discharged to the major water bodies without any previous treatment, they can cause disaster to the ecological equilibrium in the environment as these molecules have carcinogenic and mutagenic properties in the direction of water organisms and produce treat to a human being at the end of these food chains (Muthirulan et al 2012a, b). Abstract In this study, the photocatalytic activity of polypyrrole-TiO2 nanocomposite was studied experimentally for the degradation of methylene blue (MB) dye under simulating solar light irradiation. The prepared nanocomposite showed better photocatalytic activity than bare TiO2 under sunlight irradiation for the degradation of MB dye.

Results

Conclusion