Potential of Ag-Fe co-doped TiO2 nanocomposite for solar photocatalysis of high COD pharmaceutical effluent and influencing factors

摘要

Ag-Fe co-doped TiO2 photocatalysts were synthesized by sol-gel method followed by calcination and characterized using X-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscopy, Brunauer-Emmett-Teller, UV-Vis spectroscopy, transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and energy-dispersive X-ray analysis. Photocatalytic activity of these photocatalysts was compared with undoped TiO2 and Fe-doped TiO2 for the degradation of synthetic wastewater prepared from diflourotriazoleacetophenone (DFTA) (initial concentration of 8 g/L with initial COD of 75,000 mg/L). The nanoparticles were engineered by varying the catalyst composition (Ti/Ag molar ratio 10-55) for efficient photocatalytic degradation of DFTA. Factors affecting degradation such as catalyst dosage (1-8 g/L), adsorption time in dark (15-60 min) and pH (2-8) were studied to determine optimum conditions for wastewater treatment. The catalyst composition with Fe content of 0.5 wt% and Ti-to-Ag molar ratio of 30, catalyst dosage of 3 g/L, pH 5, adsorption time in dark of 30 min and solar radiation time of 5 h were found to be the optimum conditions for the efficient photocatalytic degradation of DFTA.