Study on Indoor Nitrous Oxide Gas Neutralization by Using Anatase and Rutile Nanotitania

Abstract

Nitrous oxide is generally emitted from industry through fossil fuel combustion thus giving adverse effect to human health and environments. Catalytic converter is the common method used to neutralize this hazardous gas but the high cost of precious metals had limited its application. Nanotitania could neutralize nitrous oxide by the photocatalytic phenomenon and the material is effective as it has small band gap energy and large surface area. In this study, we produced both anatase and rutile crystalline phase nanotitania from a local titanium mineral as the starting material. A significant improvement to the properties of our nanotitania is due to the present of naturally doped neodymium and zirconium ions that are present in the titanium mineral. This make the band gaps for both anatase and rutile to be smaller and effective in photocatalytic process. Three different nanotitania formulations, pure anatase, pure rutile and mixed rutile and anatase phases, were tried in the study and the results showed that all these three formulations were able to neutralize the nitrous oxide within a very short duration. Comparative study was then performed with a blank sample and the result shows there is still significant amount of nitrous oxide present after the 2 hours run.