A.I. Fadhilah, D. Moentamaria, A.S. Suryandari
The continued growth of the Indonesian textile sector has resulted in an increase in wastewater containing synthetic dyes, which are hazardous to the environment and difficult to dissolve down. In order to degrade dyes in textile wastewater, this work attempts to maximize the photocatalytic efficiency of a TiO2/activated carbon composite made from tobacco stem waste. Tobacco stems were pyrolyzed for 3 h with temperature of 300 °C to obtain carbon substrate, which was then mixed with TiO2 using the solid-state technique at ratios of 1:0 and 1:4. FTIR analysis was used to characterize the obtaining carbon. The photocatalytic degradation efficiency of methylene blue dye was maintained under UV light irradiation and examined using a UV-Vis spectrophotometer, with a catalyst loading of 0.01% and a contact period of 90 min. This study revealed that a TiO2/activated carbon ratio of 1:4 obtained the maximum degradation efficiency of 87.17%. These results suggest that activated carbon derived from tobacco stems may be a potential support material for increasing TiO2 photocatalytic activity in applications involving dye degradation. © Published under licence by IOP Publishing Ltd.
Chemical Engineering Department, Politeknik Negeri Malang, Malang, Indonesia