Synthesis, Characterization and Methyl Orange Degradation Activity of Ti-Al Oxides Nanomaterial

Abstract

The present work reports the synthesis of Ti-Al Oxides (TAOs) nanomaterial by an organic solvent-free impregnation method. The as-prepared products were studied by XRD, SEM-EDAX, UV-Vis, and FT-IR analytical techniques. XRD patterns revealed the fact that both TiO2 (TO)and TAOs exhibited almost similar peaks with the exception to minor peak difference in width and height which could be attributed to the alteration in the size of particles. At the calcination temperature of 500 oC, the absence of peaks for Al2O3 (AO) in the TAOs XRD pattern indicates the amorphous nature of AO. However, the appearance of Ti, Al, and O on EDAX and redshift on UV-Vis spectra confirm the successful impregnation of AO on TO. The pollutant degradation ability of TAOs photocatalyst was tested on methyl orange (MO) dye. Compared to pure TO, TAO composite has greater degradation efficiency. However, as the percentage of AO increases the degradation efficiency decreases. The conducted Langmuir model test was found to fit well for the photocatalytic reaction process following first-order reaction kinetics. Comparing the values for kinetics constant with earlier work, this work showed good MO degradation efficiency with reaction rate constant (k) values of 0.023.