Investigatethe photocatalytic activity of titanium dioxide combined with the zeolite at safranin dye removal in the water

Dye is considered as one of the most important environmental pollutants in industrial wastewater due to its harmful effects on both human and environment. This study was aimed to determine the the photocatalytic activity of titanium dioxide (TiO2), combined with the zeolite in removing red safranin dye in the aqueous phase.
TiO2 nanoparticles were produced using sol – gel method and 2.5 ml sol-gel was coated on zeolite. Red safranin dye was chosen as the model pollutant. X-ray diffraction (XRD) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) were applied to specify the structure and morphology of TiO2 nanoparticles. The effect of TiO2 coating on zeolite, UV radiation intensity, initial concentration of dye and type of photocatalyst substrate in photocatalytic removal efficiency was investigated.
Findings: XRD results, the TiO2 nanoparticles had two phases including anatase (80.5%) and rutile (19.5%).The uniformity of nanoparticles was evidents in the SEM images. The removal efficiency of TiO2 coated on zeolite was more than that of only the TiO2 coating. With increasing UV radiation intensity from 2.4 w/m2 to 3.9 w/m2, the photocatalytic efficiency was also enhanced but the removal efficiency decreased from 91.61% to 77.91% when the red safranin dye concentration increased from 10 mg/L to 50 mg/L. The moving TiO2/zeolite photocatalyst bed had a higher efficiency than the fixed bed.
The TiO2/zeolite photocatalyst was much more effective than TiO2 photocatalyst in removing the red safranin dye in the aqueous phase. In other words, TiO2 coating on the zeolite, The removal efficiency of dyes increases from aqueous environment. TiO2/zeolite photocatalyst with fixed bed is recommended to be used in water treatment where the most important problem of using moving-bed TiO2/zeolite photocatalyst is opacity in the water treatment.