Influence of Carbon Active Size on the Photocatalytic Activity of TiO2/AC Nanocomposites for Degradation of Organic Water Pollutant

Titanium dioxide is one of the important photocatalysts because of its high activity, chemical stability,robustness against photocorrosion, low toxiticity, no-twain pollution and availability at low cost so far, specially for the detoxification of water and air. However shortcomings of conventional powder catalysts lie in the low efficiency in making use of light, difficulty in stirring and separation in perpetration. These disadvantages of TiO2 results in low efficiency in photocatalytic activity. Therefore much recent work was focused on the preparation as well as on the modification of TiO2.In the present work TiO2-coated activated carbon (TiO2/AC) composites and pure TiO2 powders were prepared by a sol–gel method using tetrabutylorthotitanate as a precursor. The samples were characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and BET. The effect of carbon active size on degradation of acid blue 92 and the photoactivity of nanocomposite was alsostudied