Facile Development of Poly (Hexafluorobutylacrylate-Co-Acrylic Acid) Membrane via Coordinated Immobilization of rGO Doped-TiO2 for Adsorption-Cum-Photocatalytic Degradation of Cationic Dye Mixture
摘要
The objective of the research was to investigate the processes of adsorption-cum-photocatalytic degradation aiming at removal of textile dye pollutants like Methylene Blue and Safranin Orange and their mixtures when exposed to UV-A irradiation within a batch photoreactor, following a dark phase adsorption–desorption equilibration. A photocatalytic hybrid membrane was meticulously fabricated by applying the non-solvent induced phase separation technique and thoroughly characterized through techniques like FTIR, TGA, UTM and FESEM. The dimensional stability of the polymer supported composite membrane demonstrated remarkable improvement as compared to the bare copolymer. The fabricated membrane was found to exhibit excellent adsorptive properties with 64.75% removal for 15 mgL−1 methylene blue (MB) dye, and 56.09% for 15 mgL−1 safranin O (SO) dye and photocatalytic properties with 90.08% for 15 mgL−1 MB, and 74.31% for 15 mgL−1 SO, singularly. While, the percentages of photocatalytic degradation of MB (15 mgL−1) and SO (15 mgL−1) in the binary mixture system (MBSO) were found to be 80.38% and 70.28% respectively, when subjected to 120 min of UV-A irradiations. The experimental findings revealed that the most effective photodegradation of both the dyes emerged under UVA irradiation introduced at highly basic pH domains (pH ~ 11) reaching as high as 95.23% for 15 mgL−1 MB and 82.32% for 15 mgL−1 SO solutions respectively. The reusability studies conducted with the membrane exhibited a photodegradation of 80.20% of 15 mgL−1 MB and 62.08% of 15 mgL−1 SO at the end of the fifth cycle. The batch kinetic study showed that the adsorption process followed pseudo-second order and the photocatalysis study followed pseudo-first order.