Mesoporous simonkolleite–TiO2 nanostructured composite for simultaneous photocatalytic hydrogen production and dye decontamination

Abstract

In the present work, mesoporous simonkolleite–TiO2 composite was prepared with sol–gel method. The composite photocatalysts were characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), diffuse reflectance spectroscopy (DRS), and Raman spectroscopy. Also, surface area and particle size were analyzed using BET equation. The photocatalytic hydrogen production with simultaneous decolorization of Remazole Red (F3B) dye was investigated over TiO2 and simonkolleite–TiO2 composite under UV–vis light irradiation. It was worthy to be noted that the rate of hydrogen production over simonkolleite–TiO2 is higher that produced over TiO2. The maximum amount of photocatalytic-produced hydrogen was 2.1mmol and 3.3mmol within 240min using TiO2 and simonkolleite–TiO2 composite, respectively. The specific production rate of hydrogen from photocatalytic conversion of dye was calculated. Improvement of apparent quantum yield (22.07%) after 5h was achieved upon addition of simonkolleite to TiO2. This high apparent quantum yield proves that the system proposed in this study could be a hopeful approach toward using sunlight energy as outlook energy source. The obtained results suggested that a new process for H2 production from wastewater could be achieved. The process also provides a method for degradation of organic pollutants with simultaneous H2 production.