Tio2 supported on brick waste as low cost photocatalyst for dye photodegradation

Photocatalysis is one of the most important technology for treating water pollutants effectively. The method is better compared to adsorption method in that photocatalysis gives advance destroying organic contaminants and has better reusability. In other side, textile industry including Batik’s industry is a potential source of wastewater contaminated with dyes which can cause serious environmental problems. For photocatalysis purposes, TiO2 is the popular material. In order to enhance both economic and photocatalytic activity of TiO2, supporting TiO2 into solid material is interesting effort. In this research, brick waste was chosen as low cost and effective support for TiO2. TiO2 supporting onto brick waste by impregnation method was carried out. The composite of TiO2/Brick waste (TiO2/BW) was conducted by dispersing titanium tetraisopropoxide as TiO2 precursor followed by calcination. Characterization of TiO2/BW was performed by XRD analysis, Diffuse Reflectance UV-Vis and FTIR analysis. For photocatalytic activity, experiments on photocatalysis and photooxidation of rhodamine B solution were examined. Prepared Ti-BW exhibits the formation of TiO2 in mixed anatase and rutile phases as presented by XRD pattern. From the DRUV-Vis analysis, it is found that the band gap energy of composite material lays in UV-Visible region. TiO2/BW showed high photoactivity as represented by faster degradation rate of rhodamine B over photooxidation and photocatalysis compared to adsorption method. From the data simulation, it is revealed that rhodamine B degradation over photocatalysis mechanism follow pseudo-first order while over photooxidation the kinetic obey pseudo-second order.