Fabrication of nitrogen doped TiO ₂/Fe ₂O ₃ nanostructures for photocatalytic oxidation of methanol based wastewater

Abstract

An important industrial process that often occurs on the surface of a heterogeneous catalyst using thermochemical or photochemical could help in the oxidation of methanol-based wastewater to formaldehyde. Titania-based photocatalysts have drawn a lot of interest from scientists because they are a reliable and affordable catalyst material for photocatalytic oxidation processes in the presence of light energy. In this study, a straight-forward hydrothermal method for producing n-TiO ₂@α-Fe ₂O ₃ composite photocatalysts and hematite (α-Fe ₂O ₃) nanocubes has been done. By adjusting the ratio of n-TiO ₂ in the prepared composite photocatalysts, the enhancing influence of the nitrogen-doped titania on the photocatalytic characteristics of the prepared materials was investigated. The prepared materials were thoroughly characterized using common physiochemical methods, such as transmission electron microscope (TEM), scanning electron microscope (SEM), X-ray diffraction (XRD), energy dispersive X-ray (EDX), X-ray photoelectrons spectroscopy (XPS), physisorption (BET), and others, in order to learn more about the structure The results obtained showed that nitrogen-doped titania outperforms non-doped titania for methanol photooxidation. The addition of nitrogen-doped titania to their surfaces resulted in an even greater improvement in the photooxidation rates of the methanol coupled with hematite. The photooxidation of methanol in the aqueous solution to simulate its concentration in the wastewater has been occurred. After 3 h, the four weight percent of n-TiO ₂@α-Fe ₂O ₃ photocatalyst showed the highest rate of HCHO production.