Investigation on the photocatalytic activity of TiO2@WO3/ZnO catalyst in the waste water treatment containing alkanolamine contaminants

In this study a novel photocatalyst, TiO2@WO3/ZnO, has been designed and fabricated. To prepare the catalyst with the highest performance, optimized weight fraction of WO3+Zno (with 1:4 weight ratio), has been alloyed with TiO2. The results from BET and BJH established that synthesized catalyst had relatively high specific surface area (10.3 m2 g-1) and meso-pore structure with cavities diameter of 10.9 nm. The as-synthesized photocatalyst has been employed in the alkanolamine contaminant degradation of wastewater obtained from an industrial gas refinery plant in the presence of LED light. In this regard, the degradation of alkanolamine during time was monitored using UV-Vis and fluorescence spectroscopies. The obtained results confirmed high performance of the designed catalyst in the rapid treatment of wastewater of gas refinery effluent at very low catalyst loading of only 0.5 wt.%, thereby making it a good candidate for the catalytic purposes. Finally, a possible mechanism for catalytic degradation of alkanolamine over TiO2@WO3/ZnO was proposed.