Anchored titania on magnetic two-dimensional carbon nanostructures for improving the degradation of organic pollutants: Effect of titania nanoparticle content

Titania is anchored as photocatalytic nanoparticles on the surface of two-dimensional nanostructures such as graphene oxide , which acts as a support. Changing the amount of titania nanoparticle precursor (TiCl 4 ) from 0.4 ml to 1.2 ml leads to the synthesis of two types of magnetic photocatalysts coded as GFT#1 and GFT#2. The difference of the prepared photocatalysts is in the content of titania nanoparticles attached to the magnetic graphene oxide sheets. The results of X-ray diffraction analysis showed that titania nanoparticles have a combination of anatase and rutile crystal phases. So that the intensity of the peaks appearing in the GFT#2 is much higher than the GFT#1, which is related to the increase in the amount of photocatalytic nanoparticles in the GFT#2. Also, the changes in the removal efficiency of methyl orange with respect to the irradiation time (in the range of 5 min to 40 min) and the concentration of the GFT#1 and GFT#2 (0.05%wt, 0.1%wt, 0.2%wt) indicate the positive increasing effect of both factors on the photocatalytic decomposition. The maximum removal efficiency of methyl orange using the GFT#1 and GFT#2 is 73.6% and 91.3%, respectively, which occur at 0.2%wt and 40 min. Statistical modeling shows the fit of quadratic model on experimental findings with high and acceptable accuracy (over 98%). Investigating the simultaneous effect of time and concentration using the response surface method also shows that time is more effective than concentration on removal efficiency.