Biotemplate based Synthesis of Rare Earth-Doped Mesoporous Titania for Environmental Remediation

Water pollution is major area of concern and a primer thrust area in research with respect to deliberate addition of various pollutants in most of the water bodies. Annually around 7.5 metric tons of dyes were released in the nearby water bodies by the dying industries. Presence of colour not only degrades water quality but also loses its aesthetic value& also is not acceptable for any other purpose of water application such as agriculture or recreational purpose. Therefore it is important to treat dye added water effectively. Photocatalytic approach is a simple and effective technique for dye removal. Titania based materials were found to be stable and non toxic photocatalysts and hence research is directed towards synthesis of biotempleted Titania with non noble metal doping. Biotemplate here used is chitosan and doping was done by using rare earth metal Cerium. The synthesiszed photocatalyst was referred as Ce-doped mesoporous titania. The band gap value determined via UV-Visible Diffuse Reflectance Spectroscopy was fund to be 2.66eV with λ max value of about 465nm and it is well substantiated by the yellow ochre colour of the material. BET-Surface area was found to be 130m 2 /g with total pore volume was found to be 0.1778 cm 2 /g and average pore size of about 49.86 A o . The synthesized photocatalyst was investigated for photocatalytic Methyl Orange dye removal reaction, where the initial concentration of dye was kept 5ppm, illumination source = 2 Tungsten filament lamp of 200 W intensity each, duration of illumination = 4h. The photocatalyst removed 51% of dye and on further extension of illumination up to 6h 100% dye removal was observed. Optimization of operating conditions is in progress.