This work aimed to optimize high-performance photocatalysts based on graphene oxide/titanium dioxide (GO/TiO
2) nanocomposites for the effective degradation of aqueous pollutants. The catalytic activity was tested against the degradation of dichloroacetic acid (DCA), a by-product of disinfection processes that is present in many industrial wastewaters and effluents. GO/TiO
2 photocatalysts were prepared using three different methods, hydrothermal, solvothermal, and mechanical, and varying the GO/TiO
2 ratio in the range of 1 to 10%. Several techniques were applied to characterize the catalysts, and better coupling of GO and TiO
2 was observed in the thermally synthesized composites. Although the results obtained for DCA degradation showed a coupled influence of the composite preparation method and its composition, promising results were obtained with the photocatalysts compared to the limited activity of conventional TiO
2. In the best case, corresponding to the composite synthesized via hydrothermal method with 5% of GO/TiO
2 weight ratio, an enhancement of 2.5 times of the photocatalytic degradation yield of DCA was obtained compared to bare TiO
2, thus opening more efficient ways to promote the application of photocatalytic remediation technologies.
相似文献