Investigation of the effect of operational parameters and SnO2-coupling on the photocatalytic activity of TiO2

The effect of different operational parameters in UV/TiO2 process, such as initial dye concentration (20-50 mg l-1), light intensity (8-45 W m-2), pH (2.83-10.22), hydrogen peroxide concentration (100-500 mg l-1), temperature (21-45 ˚C) and photocatalyst concentration (150-900 mg l-1) were investigated on the decolorization of Acid Yellow 23 as a model compound from monoazo textile dyes. The apparent first-order rate constants (kap) were evaluated which confirms pseudo first-order kinetics. kap increased with the enhancement of pH, light intensity and temperature. A desired concentration found for hydrogen peroxide (400 mg l-1) and photocatalyst concentration (750 mg l-1). The SnO2 photocatalyst was not as effective as TiO2 but had the same desired concentration (750 mg l-1). Then TiO2+SnO2 suspensions (375+375 mg l-1) as photocatalysts were employed for decolorization at different solution thicknesses. The results showed that the coupled particles were not much different from single TiO2 system at the solution thickness of 4.5 cm in a batch reactor. But the coupled system was more effective when the solution thickness was reduced to 2.5 cm. Over 90% of decolorization occurs at the solution thickness of 1.1 cm after 30 min of irradiation while 90% decolorization takes place at the solution thickness of 4.5 cm after 100 min of irradiation.