Fotodegradação de poluentes orgânicos com catalisadores à base de ferro

Abstract

Organic pollutants are a group of molecules that cause a significant impact on the environment, due to their recalcitrant properties, which can come into contact with the organism of living beings and cause a series of diseases. Therefore, in this work, iron-based catalysts such as CuFe2O4/TiO2, KIT-6/CoFe2O4/TiO2 and SiO2/SrFe12O19 were used to photodegrade the contaminants paracetamol and industrial dye remazol red (CIVR) in acidic conditions, in order to carry out a comparative study of their catalytic properties. The techniques implemented to characterize the photocatalysts were X-ray diffraction (XRD), UV-Vis spectrophotometry and zeta potential. Each of the materials has the desired crystallographic phases as predicted by the synthesis. The band gap energy for the CuFe2O4/TiO2, KIT-6/CoFe2O4/TiO2 and SiO2/SrFe12O19 catalysts was 1.60, 1.56 and 1.38 eV and the zeta potentials were 13.0, 17.1, -18.5 mV, respectively. Furthermore, photodegradation was monitored with the aid of a UV-Vis Spectrophotometer at varying time intervals, resulting in degradation percentages for CuFe2O4/TiO2 of 42.2% and 18.2% of the CIVR and of paracetamol, respectively, while for KIT-6/CoFe2O4/TiO2 it was possible to convert the paracetamol structure into an intermediate in a time of 180 min and degraded CIVR by 100% over 60 minutes. Finally, the SiO2/SrFe12O19 catalyst managed to degrade contaminants in percentages of 100% and 10%, CIVR and paracetamol, respectively.