Nanomaterials Based on TiO2 for Effluent Pollutant Photodegradation

One of the most recent nanomaterials that has attracted great attention due to its unique properties is titanium dioxide. TiO2 powders possess interesting optical, dielectrical and catalytical properties, which results in industrial applications such as pigments, fillers, catalyst supports and photocatalysts. Photocatalysis over titanium dioxide has been heavily investigated as a promising means of treating a wide variety of emerging pollutants and recent research effort has been devoted to improving the photocatalytic efficiency of TiO2 through a variety of materials engineering approaches, such as enhancing the visible-light activity of TiO2 through doping. Tannery wastewater represents a serious environmental and technological problem, owing to the large amounts of poorly biodegradable organic chemicals used. The use of photocatalytic TiO2 nanoparticles to decontaminate industrial tannery wastewater has not been yet investigated. That is why, this paper aims to investigate the synthesis and characterization of TiO2 and N doped TiO2 nanoparticles used for the photodegradation of effluent pollutants from the leather industry. The new nanoparticles were synthesized through chemical routes and were characterized by dynamic light scattering and diffuse reflectance spectra measurements. Their photocatalytic activity was tested against an organic pollutant model, Orange II (OII).