Synthesis and characterization of titanium dioxide hollow nanofiber for photocatalytic degradation of methylene blue dye

• Main Authors: Jafri, N. N. M., Jaafar, J., Alias, N. H., Samitsu, S., Aziz, F., Wan Salleh, W. N., Mohd. Yusop, M. Z., Othman, M. H. D., Rahman, M. A., Ismail, A. F., Matsuura, T., Isloor, A. M.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2021
• Subjects: TP Chemical technology
• Online Access: http://eprints.utm.my/id/eprint/95491/1/NurulNatashaMohammad2021_SynthesisandCharacterizationofTitanium.pdf; http://eprints.utm.my/id/eprint/95491/; http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/membranes11080581

Environmental crisis and water contamination have led to worldwide exploration for advanced technologies for wastewater treatment, and one of them is photocatalytic degradation. A one‐dimensional hollow nanofiber with enhanced photocatalytic properties is considered a promising material to be applied in the field. Therefore, we synthesized titanium dioxide hollow nanofibers (THNF) with extended surface area, light‐harvesting properties and an anatase–rutile heterojunction via a template synthesis method and followed by a calcination process. The effect of calcination temperature on the formation and properties of THNF were determined and the possible mechanism of THNF formation was proposed. THNF nanofibers produced at 600 °C consisted of a mixture of 24.2% anatase and 75.8% rutile, with a specific surface area of 81.2776 m2/g. The hollow nanofibers also outperformed the other catalysts in terms of photocatalytic degradation of MB dye, at 85.5%. The optimum catalyst loading, dye concentration, pH, and H2O2 concentration were determined at 0.75 g/L, 10 ppm, pH 11, and 10 mM, respectively. The highest degradation of methylene blue dye achieved was 95.2% after 4 h of UV irradiation.