A Comparison Study of Photocatalytic Activity of Fe3O4/TiO2 and Ag/TiO2 on the Degradation of 2, 4-Dichlorophenol

In this work, pure TiO2 and binary nanocomposites of Fe3O4/TiO2 and Ag/TiO2 were synthesized in order to improve photocatalytic performance of these samples for degradation of 2, 4-dichlorophenol (2, 4-DCP) as an organic pollutant. A range of analytical techniques including XRD, DRS, SEM/EDX, and elemental mapping were employed to reveal the crystal structure, morphology and property of the nanocomposites. XRD data demonstrated that the prepared samples are purely in TiO2 anatase phase and cubic spinel Fe3O4 exist in the synthesized nanocomposite. We calculated the TiO2 crystal size from XRD patterns, in the range of 8.35-11.09 nm. The presence of Ag, Fe, O, and Ti atoms in the synthesized nanocomposites was confirmed by SEM/EDX. We obtained 30.43, 32.02 and 42.40 % degradation of 2, 4-DCP (100 ml 2, 4-DCP 40 ppm and 0.01 g catalyst) for pure TiO2, Fe3O4/TiO2 and Ag/TiO2, respectively, after 180 min of irradiation under visible light. Similar conditions were employed for 2, 4-DCP degradation under UV irradiation, we obtained 53.05, 51.00 and 71.50 % degradation of 2, 4-DCP pure TiO2, Fe3O4/TiO2 and Ag/TiO2, respectively. Thus, the synthesized binary nanocomposites exhibited higher photocatalytic activity compared to pure TiO2 under visible light.