Preparation, characterization and photocatalytic properties of rubber-TiO2-rGO composite sheets for dye decomposition in wastewater

Abstract

In this work, rubber-TiO2-rGO (RT-rGO) composite sheets were successfully prepared by a simple latex mixing-casting method using TiO2 and natural rubber latex with different amounts of rGO loading. The prepared RT-rGO sheet samples were characterized by XRD, FT-IR, Raman, SEM and EDS techniques. The photocatalytic properties of the prepared RT-rGO sheets as catalyst were evaluated using methylene blue (MB) dye solution under UV light irradiation. The result indicated that all the composite sheets loaded with rGO had better photocatalytic activities than the sheet without rGO loading. RT-rGO6.2% sheet showed the highest removal efficiency of 93.3% which has the rate constant (kapp) as 98.2 times higher than the unloaded sheet. Furthermore, the efficiency of the RT-rGO sheet upon the repeated usage was also studied. The result indicated that the sheet could be easily used, recovered and reused many times with no need for the cleaning in between successive uses. Thus, the RT-rGO sheet appears to be an attractive-material for the wastewater treatment or the water purification industry.