Nanocomposite of TiO2 and Phase-transition-derived α-Fe2O3 for Enhancing Photocatalytic Dye Degradation
Main Article Content
Abstract
Although a-Fe2O3 is a promising photocatalyst for Advanced Oxidation Processes in dye-polluted wastewater treatment, its practical efficiency is limited by inherent drawbacks including rapid electron-hole recombination and poor electron mobility. This study proposes a TiO2/a-Fe2O3 nanocomposite system to enhance dye removal efficiency of a-Fe2O3, specifically Methylene Blue (MB), in which hierarchical porous, coral-like a-Fe2O3 was prepared via a thermal phase transition process from g-Fe2O3. X-ray diffraction analysis and peak deconvolution were used to confirm that the phase transition to a-Fe2O3 completed after 3 hours of annealing at 800 °C. With the combination of TiO2 and a-Fe2O3, the dye degradation efficiency increased significantly, demonstrating superior photocatalytic performance under visible light compared to the conventional photo-Fenton process observed for pure a-Fe2O3. In detail, this nanocomposite system achieved nearly 100% degradation of 20 ppm MB within 2 hours, reaching the degradation rate constant of 1.5595 h-1 which was considerably higher than that of a-Fe2O3 (k = 0.4563 h-1). Furthermore, TiO2/a-Fe2O3 proved to be durable, maintaining over 90% efficiency after five reuse cycles with MB concentration of 40 ppm with negligible structural degradation. This enhanced performance is proposed due to the synergistic photocatalytic effect, including photo-Fenton and photocatalytic pathways, which comes from the favorable band alignment of TiO2 and a-Fe2O3. These findings contributed that the TiO2/a-Fe2O3 is promising catalyst with great potential for practical applications in solar-driven treatment of dye-polluted wastewater.
Keywords:
phase transition; α-Fe2O3; TiO2; methylene blue, dye degradation.
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