Microplastic Pollutant Degradation in Water Using Modified TiO Photocatalyst under UV-Irradiation

Abstract

Modified TiO photocatalyst has been widely studied on its ability to degrade pollutants in water. Nowadays, one of the water pollutants that significantly polluted water is microplastic. Photocatalyst TiO can create an oxidizing agent to degrade microplastic pollutants but have a very high recombination rate of electrons and holes. By modifying TiO with silver dopant using Photo-assisted Deposition (PAD) and Reduced Graphene oxide (RGO) using the ultrasonic radiation method, can highly increase the ability of TiO catalyst. The modified catalyst was characterized by SEM-EDX and UV-Vis DRS to analyze the properties change of the composite. The performance of composites in degrading microplastic (polyethylene) was tested under UV radiation for 4 hours. The Ag/TiO/RGO catalyst has a significantly high degradation percentage with 76% compared to pure TiO and Ag/TiO with degradation percentage of 56% and 68% respectively.