Synthesis and characterisation of highly ordered mesoporous Fe2O3–SiO2 composite and its removal properties of azo dyes from aqueous solution

Abstract

Highly ordered mesoporous material MCM-41 was synthesised from tetraethylorthosilicate as an Si source and cetyltrimethylammonium bromide as a template. Fe2O3 with 100 wt-% was introduced into the highly ordered mesoporous MCM-41 by chemical precipitation method to prepare the highly ordered mesoporous Fe2O3–SiO2 composite. The samples were characterised by X-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscopy, transmission electron microscopy, Fourier transformed infrared spectroscopy, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, UV-vis spectrophotometry, and nitrogen adsorption–desorption measurement respectively. The results indicate that the synthesised Fe2O3–SiO2 composite has a highly ordered mesoporous structure with a specific surface area of 593 m2 g−1 and a pore volume of 0·322 cm3 g−1. The performance of Fe2O3–SiO2 composite as a remover was further demonstrated in the removal of methyl orange (MO), Congo red, methylene blue (MB), rhodaming B (RB) under visible light irradiation respectively. A good ability to remove MB, RB and MO can be obtained. In especially, the Fe2O3–SiO2 composite shows an excellent removal performance for MB under the room temperature in short time, making them to be promising candidates for wastewater treatment.