Synthesis of Iron-doped Titania Photocatalyst by Sol-gel Method and Its Application in Degradation of Dyes

Abstract

Amounts of dyes produced from industry has contribute to poor quality of water, thus destroying the ecosystem. In this study, TiO2 and Fe/TiO2 photocatalyst were prepared from sol-gel method that was calcined at 500°C for 2 hours. The prepared photocatalyst were characterized by Fourier Transform Infra-red Spectrophotometer (FTIR), thermogravimetry analyzer (TGA) and X-ray diffraction analyzer (XRD). FTIR spectral data exhibited the presence of functional groups of Ti-O-Ti vibrations at below 800 cm-1. TGA result reveals that there was no mass loss after 500°C indicating the calcination temperature is optimal for achieve highly crystalline of TiO2. XRD of synthesised photocatalyst showed the presence of anatase phases. The synthesised TiO2 and Fe/TiO2 were successfully used as photocatalyst for the degradation of methylene blue (MB) and methyl orange (MO) under irradiation of UV light, analyzed using UV-Visible spectrophotometer. The photocatalytic degradation using TiO2 and Fe/TiO2 photocatalyst for MB giving an efficiency of 20.6% and 53.2%, respectively while the degradation of MO recorded were 33.9% and 46.6% respectively. Both reactions followed the pseudo-first order reaction with rate constant of 0.0018 min-1 and 0.0065 min-1 for degradation of MB using TiO2 and Fe/TiO2 while rate constant for degradation of MO were 0.0034 min-1 and 0.0052 min-1, respectively. Results show that Fe/TiO2 displays higher photocatalytic activity than TiO2 for both degradation of MB and MO dyes.