Preparation and photocatalytic performance of muscovite/TiO2 composites

Abstract

Muscovite/TiO2(M/T)composite photocatalytic materials were synthesized by a hydrothermal method using tetrabutyl titanate as the titanium source and glacial acetic acid as the inhibitor. The phase structure, surface morphology, element distribution and optical property of the obtained samples were characterized by X-ray diffraction(XRD), Raman spectra(Raman), scanning electron microscope(SEM), energy disperse spectroscopy(EDS), Brunner-Emmet-Teller(BET), ultraviolet-visible diffuse reflectance spectroscopy(UV-Vis)and fluorescence spectra(PL), respectively. And methyl orange(MO)solution was used as the target pollutant to investigate the effects of hydrothermal temperatures, hydrothermal time and the mass of TiO2 on the photocatalytic performance of M/T composites. The results show that the M/T composite with TiO2 loading amount 20%(mass fraction) and 100 ℃ hydrothermal for 16 h exhibits the optimal photocatalytic properties, the degradation rate of MO reaches 99.62% and TOC removal rate is 63.58% after UV light irradiation for 60 min. After repeated use for 5 times, the photocatalytic activity is not decreased significantly. Furthermore, the photocatalytic process of M/T composites conforms to the first-order reaction kinetic model and the best reaction rate constant is 0.049 min-1.

Keywords

• muscovite
• tio2
• photocatalysis
• kinetics