IMMOBILIZED TITANIUM DIOXIDE (TIO2) IN DIFFERENT SUPPORT MATERIALS TO USE IN HETEROGENEOUS PHOTOCATALYSIS

The technological bottleneck for the application of heterogeneous photocatalysis with titanium dioxide (TiO2) is the retention and reuse of the catalyst, which brings opportunities for studying techniques for its immobilization on solid supports. The main objective of this paper was to test different methods to effectively immobilize TiO2 on granular activated carbon (GAC), crushed ceramic material (CCM) and zeolite (ZEO) in order to use the catalyst for sulfamethoxazole (SMX) removal from aqueous solutions. For this, three TiO2 immobilization methods (1-immersion of the support in TiO2 slurry; 2-covering by sol-gel synthesis using titanium isopropoxide; 3-impregnating the support with white wall paint doped with TiO2) were tested and the resulting catalyst were characterized and evaluated for SMX removal. The results showed that GAC was the best support and that its immersion in a 50% (w/v) TiO2 suspension was the best immobilization method. Photodegradation assays with such catalyst carried out with 10 mg.L-1 of the antibiotic sulfamethoxazole (SMX) led to 90% of removal of this pharmaceutical after 3.5 hours, which was similar to 38% higher than the UV photolysis at the same contact time.