Photocatalytic Study of New Immobilized TiO₂ Technique Towards Degradation of Reactive Red 4 Dye

¹ Faculty of Applied Sciences, Universiti Teknologi MARA, 40450 Shah Alam, Selangor, Malaysia
² Faculty of Applied Sciences, Universiti Teknologi MARA, 02600 Arau, Perlis, Malaysia

^a Corresponding author : ain.syazwani@hotmail.com

Abstract

The study on TiO₂ for wastewater remediation has gained interest among researchers. However, the application of this photocatalyst is limited due to non-recyclability of conventional TiO₂. Thus, immobilization technique has been developed to solve this issue. Hence, a comparison study between two types of immobilized photocatalysts namely titanium dioxide (TiO₂) and TiO₂ mixed with polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) has been conducted in this work to observe the significant effect of PVA polymer in photocatalysis reaction of reactive red 4 (RR4) dye. Double sided adhesive tape (DSAT) was used as thin layer binder in this immobilization system. The result shows that the photocatalytic performance of TiO₂-PVA/DSAT was higher than that of TiO₂/DSAT under both normal UV and visible light irradiations due to the conjugated unsaturated polymer from PVA serve as electron donor for TiO₂ thus increase the photocatalysis process. Besides, TiO₂-PVA/DSAT was also found to possess much better adhesion strength to the support material compared to TiO₂/DSAT. Based on the findings, this TiO₂ immobilization system is expected to be beneficial in the industrial wastewater treatment. Thus, further study to improve the photocatalytic activity of this immobilized TiO₂ will be in our future work.