Highly Adsorption-Photocatalytic Tablet-Shaped Graphite Oxide-TiO2 Composites for Handling Organic Dye Pollutants

Designing effective adsorption-photocatalysts on graphite oxide-TiO2 (G/TiO2) nanocomposites tablet with easy synthesis and low cost is a challenge in treating organic dye pollutants. Here, we invented an advanced adsorption-photocatalyst based on a TiO2 framework coupled with graphite oxide to form tablets using a physical mixing method. Furthermore, these tablets were molded using metal chips for extremely high adsorption photocatalysts towards organic dyes. The mass composition has been evaluated to compare the high degradation performance of the composite mass variation in degrading organic dyes, namely methyl orange (MO) and methylene blue (MB). We discovered the 1:2 mass variation of G/TiO2 resulted in an improvement in the adsorption-photocatalytic degradation of organic dyes. The degradation rate of MO dye was 93.99% after treatment with UV light irradiation for 60 min, and the reaction rate constant was k = 0.01726 min-1. Meanwhile, MB dye also showed good performance with a degradation percentage of 80.22% and a reaction rate constant of k = 0.00947 min-1. This constant was much higher than the two mass variations (1:1 and 2:1) of G/TiO2 due to the increased availability of good sites for graphite oxide adsorption and TiO2 electron-hole pair separation. In addition, the G/TiO2 tablets showed excellent reuse and reasonable degradation for wastewater treatment.