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Volume 5, Issue 5
Res. Rev. J Mat. Sci. 2017
ISSN: 2321-6212
Advanced Materials 2017
September 07-08, 2017
September 07-08, 2017 | Edinburgh, Scotland
Advanced materials & Processing
11
th
International Conference on
Detachable photocatalysts of anatase TiO
2
nanoparticles: Annulling surface charge for immediate photocatalyst
separation
Entesar Al-Hetlani, Mohamed O. Amin
and
Metwally Madkour
Kuwait University, Kuwait
T
iO
2
photocatalysis is commonly utilised in diverse applications such as environmental waste management, biomedical and energy
fields. The present study demonstrates the effect of temperature on the characteristics of TiO
2
nanopraticles using XRD, XPS,
DLS, UV-Vis, N
2
sorpometry and TEM techniques. The optimum surface area of the photocatalyst was obtained when it was prepared
at 60 ºC. Additionally, the TEM images showed semi-spherical morphology. Afterwards, rapid photodegradation of Rhodamine 6G
dye (R6G) with efficiency of 92.5% at pH= 9.17 was accomplished using the optimised nanoparticles. The main focus of this study
is to establish a new avenue that can be used to separate the photocatalyst from the reaction medium after the photodegradation
experiment is completed. In this study, the photocatalyst was completely detached from the reaction medium in 3 minutes without
utilisation of coagulant agents or magnetic nanoparticles. This was lucratively accomplished by adjusting the pH of the medium to
match the isoelectric point (pHPZC) of the photocatalyst and annulling its surface charge, hence rapid sedimentation was observed,
Figure 1. This new method has proven to be simple, rapid, and applicable to all types of photocatalysts on the industrial scale.
Biography
Entesar Al-Hetlani has obtained her PhD. in analytical chemistry from the University of Hull, UK in 2013. Currently, she is an assistant professor at Kuwait University.
Her research interest focuses on nanomaterial synthesis and characterization for analytical applications such as areas of environmental and forensic analysis. In
this work, the synthesis, characterization, application and isolation of photonanocatalyst namely, TiO
2
was achieved using a very simple and effective method. This
method can subsequently be used to isolate any type of photonanocatalyst from a suspension regardless of the nature of the photonanocatalyst.
entesaralhetlani@gmail.comEntesar Al-Hetlani et al., Res. Rev. J Mat. Sci. 2017, 5:5
DOI: 10.4172/2321-6212-C1-006
Figure:
The efficiency of TiO
2
sedimentation at pHPZC