Porous ceramic foam loading titanium dioxide for photocatalytic degradation of the methyl orange solution

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to provide an investigation on a new kind of photocatalytic material, namely, the porous ceramic foam loading titanium dioxide, which can make an effective photocatalytic degradation of the methyl orange (MO) solution in the wastewater.

Design/methodology/approach

The natural zeolite powder has been used as the primary raw material to produce a sort of lightweight porous ceramic foam by impregnating polymer foam in slurry and then sintering. With the sol-gel method, a kind of open-cell reticular porous ceramic foam loading TiO₂ film was obtained having a good photocatalytic action, and the resultant porous composite product presents the bulk density of 0.3~0.6 g/cm³ to be able to float on water.

Findings

The MO could tend to be completely degraded in the solution with a certain concentration by the TiO₂-loaded ceramic foam irradiated with ultraviolet light, and this composite foam was found to have high degradation efficiency for the MO solution in a wide range of pH.

Originality/value

This work presents a TiO₂-loaded ceramic foam that can effectively photo-catalyze to degrade the MO in water, and the degradation efficiency were examined under different conditions of the MO solution with various pH values.

Citation

Guo, Y.J., Cheng, W. and Liu, P.S. (2019), "Porous ceramic foam loading titanium dioxide for photocatalytic degradation of the methyl orange solution", Multidiscipline Modeling in Materials and Structures, Vol. 15 No. 6, pp. 1366-1378. https://doi.org/10.1108/MMMS-03-2019-0049