Recoverability of Fe3O4/TiO2 nanocatalyst in methyl orange degradation

Iron oxide/titania (Fe3O4/TiO2) magnetic nanocatalysts approximately 30 nm in size were synthesized by co-precipitation method. The structure and morphology of the prepared nanocatalyst were characterized by Field Emission Scanning Electron Microscope coupled with Energy Dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (FESEM-EDX), Transmission Electron Microscope (TEM), Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FT-IR), X-ray Diffraction (XRD), Raman Spectroscopy, UV Diffuse Reflectance Spectroscopy (UV-DRS), Vibrating Sample Magnetometer (VSM), and Brunauer-Emmett-Teller(BET) and Barrett-Joyner-Halenda (BJH) analyses. The prepared nanocatalyst showed good photocatalytic activity for the degradation of methyl orange (MO) dye solution. The Fe3O4/TiO2 (P25) showed better photocatalytic ability compared to that of Fe3O4/TiO2 (UV100) for MO dye degradation (10 ppm) under UV irradiation (lambda = 254 nm). The experimental results revealed that 90.3% of MO dye was degraded with Fe3O4/TiO2 (P25) nanocatalyst, as compared to Fe3O4/TiO2 (UV100) nanocatalyst with only 51.6% after 1 h irradiation. The synthesized magnetic nanocatalysts are stable up to 5 cycles due to their strong recoverability towards an external magnet. Interestingly, the nanocatalyst was reasonably stable after being left undisturbed for 12 months.