Synthesis, Characterization and Adsorption of methylene blue dye using titanium dioxide nanoparticles

Abstract

The application of nanomaterial in the reclamation of wastewater has been a trending aspect of research in the recent time. This research work was carried out to investigate the adsorption of methylene blue dye using TiO2 nanoparticles. The TiO2 nanoparticles used in this work was synthesized by sol-gel method using titanium isopropoxide. After the synthesis, the titanium dioxide powder that was obtained and was calcined at 500oC. The titanium dioxide nanoparticles obtained was characterized using SEM, FTIR, and XRD. The FTIR result showed that -OH group, -CH2 group, C═O group and Ti-O-Ti stretching band played major role in the efficacy of TiO2 nanoparticles. SEM morphology indicates the porous nature of the nanoadsorbent while the XRD confirm the crystalline nature of the nanomaterial. Influence of process variables were investigated and the results indicate that the three factors studied affected the adsorption process. Adsorption isotherm parameters gave good fit to the four models used in this work with R2 values above 0.900. The kinetic studies did not fit well with Pseudo-first-order model but fitted the other three models.