Photodegradation of aqueous reactive dye using TiO2/zeolite admixtures in a continuous flow reactor

Abstract

The photocatalytic degradation of an organic dye, i.e. reactive blue 19 (RB19), was studied by employing different TiO(2)/zeolite (TZ) photocatalysts, which have TiO(2)/(TiO(2) + zeolite) weight ratios ranging from 20 to 80%, in a continuous flow system. Three light sources including two UV lights (i.e. λ(max,254 nm) and λ(max,365 nm)) and natural sunlight were used. The results showed that the decoloring rate of RB19 increased as the amount of TiO(2) in the TZ catalyst increased. The photodegradation of RB19 exhibited pseudo-first-order kinetics with respect to the concentration of RB19. Almost 100% of initial RB19 was mineralized under the controlled conditions in this study. And the activities of the prepared photocatalysts were retained after long-term durability experiments. Compared with UV lights (i.e. λ(max,254 nm) and λ(max,365 nm)), the decoloring efficiency of RB19 was significantly increased under natural sunlight illumination, which is likely due to the long-wavelength incident light that photoexcited RB19 and accelerated the degradation rate of RB19 radicals by the UV fraction of sunlight.