Iranian Chemical Engineering Journal

Iranian Chemical Engineering Journal

Simultaneous Removal of Chromium (VI) and Methylene Blue by Nano Titanium Dioxide/ Graphene Oxide/ Carbon Nanotube Photocatalyst and P25

Document Type : Original Article

Authors
1 M. Sc. in Chemical Engineering, Urmia University of Technology
2 Professor of Chemical Engineering, Urmia University of Technology
Abstract
The aim of this research is to evaluate the photocatalytic performance of titanium dioxide/graphene oxide/carbon nanotube photocatalyst and commercial titanium dioxide P25 on the simultaneous removal of Cr(VI) and methylene blue under visible light irradiation and various outdoor climate conditions in summer and autumn as natural irradiation sources. Actually, some of the industrial wastewaters contain both Cr(VI)  and methylene blue at the same time. For overcoming the actual environmental issues simultaneous removal of these inevitably coexisting pollutants in industrial wastewaters is of great of importance. For this purpose, the titanium dioxide/graphene oxide/carbon nanotube photocatalyst was synthesized by sol-gel method and characterized by X-ray diffraction analysis and field emission scanning electron microscopy.
The results show that the existence of methylene blue does not have significant effect on the removal efficiency of Cr(VI). Nevertheless, when Cr(VI) are added, the degradation of methylene blue decreases to 40 and 46% in the presence of P25 and synthesized photocatalyst, respectively. The source of radiation has a great effect on the performance of photocatalysts. In the presence of P25, changing the source of radiation from sunlight to visible light results in significant reduction of photocatalytic performance
. The simultaneous removal efficiency of Cr(VI) and methylene blue decreases to 60% and 40%, respectively under visible light irradiation.
 
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