Abstract
The Heterogeneous photocatalysis, increasingly used in effluent purification, is attracting more and more attention by the development of new photocatalytic materials based on semiconductors deposited on various supports. In this work, TiO2 supported on cellulosic fiber was prepared and characterized by different analytical techniques such as X-ray Photoelectron Spectrometry and Brunauer-Emmett-Teller surface area. Its photocatalytic activity was investigated for the degradation of Solophenyl Scarlet BNLE (SS), an organic pollutant present in textile effluents. Several conditions were investigated such as adsorption under UV and visible irradiation, catalyst recyclability, the simulated effluent pH and the presence of H2O2 as an oxidant agent. Results showed that under UV light, the removal of SS decreased significantly with increasing initial dye concentration. For an initial concentration of 5 mg/L, SS degradation was reached more than 95 % after 2 hours of treatment (neutral pH, T = 20 degrees C). The supported TiO2 on cellulose remains effective over four cycles of dye treatment. In the presence of H2O2, the degradation process was inhibited with increasing the molar ratio [H2O2]/[SS](0) from 5 to 30. The kinetic modeling showed that the removal of this pollutant followed a pseudo-first-order model (Langmuir-Hinshelwood) with a regression coefficient (R-2) value of 0.984.