Nowadays, waste water with color is plentifully generated from many industries including textile, leather, paper, printing, dye stuff, plastic and so on.1-3 Degradation and removal of dye materials from contaminated water is very important, because the water quality is severely reduced by even quite slight color. Methyl orange (MO, C 14 H 14 N 3 NaO 3 S) is one of the well-known anionic dyes, and has been widely used in textile, printing, paper, food and pharmaceutical industries and research laboratories.2 Methylene blue (MB, C 16 H 18 NSCl) is one of the most common dying materials for wood, silk and cotton.2,3 The structures of MO and MB are shown in Table 1. The degradation and removal of MO and MB from waste water is very important due to their toxicity and even carcinogenicity.The high photocatalytic activity of titanium oxide (TiO 2 ) has been well-documented in many literatures and widely used in purification of waste water.1-5 The TiO 2 (110) surface structures are shown in Figure 1 and it is believed that the surface structure is the most primitive and essential property that functions in photocatalytic activity.5,6 The studies on TiO 2 photocatalytic reactions have shown that the overall kinetics depend on both amount of adsorbed substrate on the surface be reduced or oxidized by photoexcited electron (e − ) or positive hole (h + ), respectively, and rate of geminate recombination of e − and h + . 4-6 Therefore, the different electric charge's influence of dye in aqueous heterogeneous suspensions may be complicated by possible competing reactions of direct photocatalyzed oxidation, dye photosensitized catalysis, and photolysis of the adsorbed dye.2,4,7-10 In this research, the dyes of MO and MB for reasons stated above were selected, respectively representing anionic dye and cationic dye, to study the TiO 2 photocatalytic reactions properties.
ExperimentalMaterials. The dyes of MB and MO, the anatase TiO 2 (S bet = 43 m 2 /g), and the other chemicals were of AR (Analytical reagent) grade and procured from Sinopharm Chemical Reagent Co., Ltd. (China). Distilled water was used to prepare the solutions. A Degussa P25 catalyst provided by the Degussa Company (Germany) was used without further modification throughout this work. Its main physical parameters are as follows: S bet = 65 m 2 /g; average primary particle size, around 20 nm; purity, > 99%; anatase/rutile content (w/w), 80:20. The XRD patterns of the anatase TiO 2 (a) and P25 powders (b) were shown in Figure 2. Adsorbed of OH − or H + ions. To research the surface characteristics of the TiO 2 particles, we had determined the pH change of aqueous solution due to the desorption of the different electric charges OH ions or H + ions on the TiO 2 surface, in the range of pH 0 from ca. 1 to 13. The initial pH 0 at 25°C represented by the pH value of an 20 mL aqueous solution of HNO 3 or NaOH; the final pH 1 is the pH value after aging at 25°C for 2 h, to be mixed with 1 g of (a) anatase TiO 2 or (b) P25 powders.7-9 From the intersection between the pH 0...