Preparation and characterization of PLA/TiO2 composites for photodegradation of methylene blue dyes

Fresh drinking water in the environment is scarce due to the contamination of water bodies by contaminants such as dyes, drugs, heavy metals and other aliquots from the industries. Among them, dyes have been a major concern in the manufacturing and production industries; therefore, developing appropriate techniques to remove dyes is still one of the industries' major challenges. In this project, the phase inversion method was used to prepare PLA and PLA/TiO2 nanocomposite membranes. The morphology, thermal properties, structure and crystallinity of the prepared membrane were studied, along with the photocatalysis degradation of the methylene blue. The composite membranes prepared were characterized by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) to determine the functional groups that are present in the membrane. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) was used to study the morphology of the porous membranes, and XRD and DSC to study the crystallinity of the membranes. Adsorption of methylene blue and photodegradation of the dyes were carried out at room temperature for 80 min at 10 min intervals. Composites containing 10 wt.% of TiO2 showed the highest photodegradation of the dye.