Effect of iron doped titanium oxide encapsulated in alginate on photocatalytic activity for the removal of dye pollutants

Abstract

The focal point of this work is the design and comparison of two types of iron doped TiO2 prepared by a simple sol-gel method and then encapsulated in an alginate matrix. The as-prepared recyclable bio-nanocomposite photocatalysts were made of different amounts of TiO2-Fe2O3 and TiO2-Fe3O4 (1%, 2.5%, 5%, and 10%) and were developed to improve the photocatalytic efficiency of TiO2 and simultaneously to achieve an expanded visible-light response range with high visible-light absorption potential in order to degrade organic pollutants from aqueous solutions, as a potential application. As it is essential to characterize a material to better understand it, accurate characterization of the resulting bio-nanocomposites was carried out using X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy coupled to energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (SEM-EDX), Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) and UV-diffuse reflectance spectroscopy (UV-DRS). In this study, the emphasis on blending the alginate and the iron doped-TiO2 photocatalyst nanoparticles results in a multicomponent particular shaped system that exhibits a porous structure, an exceptional surface area and a smaller band gap due to the presence of iron nanoparticles that could also maintain e-/hole separation for better photocatalytic activity under visible light.