Hydrolysis conditions on rutile titanium dioxide white pigment preparation via low concentration TiOSO4 solution

In recent years there has been a tremendous increase in preparation and modification of TiO2 type semiconductor photocatalysts, significantly in water purification applications. However recycling of finely dispersed particles resulted from the secondary pollution is one of the key drawbacks. Therefore magnetic-titania will be highly effective as a catalyst material which can be regenerated magnetically. A simple hydrothermal method was adopted to prepare Fe3O4-TiO2 using HCl leachate of ilmenite. The excess iron in the HCl leachate was removed by using the anion exchange resin IRA-410Cl in order to enhance the catalytic properties of the resulting composite. The composite material was characterized using XRD, FTIR and magnetic susceptibility measurements. The crystal planes (310) and (430) obtained in the XRD analysis which corresponds to the 2u03b8 values 32.620 and 53.010 respectively were identified as Fe3O4 crystalline planes while the crystal plane (101) corresponds for the 2u03b8 value of 23.210 was resulted from TiO2. Further the chemical identity of the as prepared composite was confirmed by FTIR analysis. The presence of peaks at 527 cm-1 and 1404 cm-1 can be attributed to Fe-O-Fe and Ti-O-Ti vibrational modes respectively. The mass susceptibility value of -4.3x10-3 further confirmed that the composite is magnetically active and is sufficient to be used in the recovery process. The decolourization of methylene blue was carried out with the respective composite and Degussa P25. Fe3O4-TiO2 composite could degrade the colour of the dye by 50% in 30 min while Degussa P25 needed only 20 min making the as prepared Fe3O4- TiO2 composite to be a potential candidate in waste water treatment applications.