Photocatalytic performance of TiO2/eggshell composite for wastewater treatment

Abstract

The utilization of eggshells as a primary source for developing value-added materials has received significant attention recently due to its ability as an excellent adsorbent and support. This study used the solid-state dispersion method to prepare composite photocatalyst TiO2/eggshells of different ratios. TiO2 and eggshell photocatalysts were also used as control samples. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM), energy-dispersive X-ray (EDX), and X-ray diffraction (XRD) analyses were used to characterize the samples. Finally, the efficiency of the composite photocatalyst was evaluated in the suspension system using methylene blue (MB) solution as the target pollutant. Among three different ratios, TiO2/eggshell (1:9) is the optimum ratio that achieved the highest adsorption and 56.41% photocatalytic degradation of MB solution. Besides, pure eggshells exhibited relatively high adsorption but did not show any significance in photocatalytic degradation. It proves that the ability of eggshell as an adsorbent is very high even though it only acted as support to the TiO2 in the TiO2/eggshell composite photocatalyst. The increased surface area of the TiO2/eggshell composite photocatalyst could enhance MB solution adsorption and photocatalytic degradation, thereby increasing its effectiveness. Overall, it can be concluded that eggshell has excellent potential as support for photocatalyst and as an environmentally friendly catalyst.