STUDY ON SYNTHESIS OF TiO2-SiO2-BASED PHOTOCATALYST AND ITS APPLICATION IN DEGRADATION OF AQUEOUS PHENOL

Abstract

Gel derived TiO2-SiO2 and N-TiO2-SiO2 mixed oxides are synthesized and employed for phenol removal under UVA light and natural sunlight in this study. Both SiO2 and N are interestingly found to improve the specific surface area of resulting catalysts as compared to bare TiO2. Meanwhile, only N is observed to significantly shift the light absorption of derived catalyst to visible range. Optimization between specific surface area and crystallinity is found to give rise to the superior photoactivity of TiO2-SiO2 catalyst in comparison with TiO2 counterpart. Under natural sunlight in Hochiminh City in September, N-TiO2-SiO2 presents the outstanding photoactivity towards phenol removal with the efficiency up to 90% as compared to those of 62% and 60% for bare TiO2-SiO2 and bare TiO2, respectively.