Preparation, Characterization and Performances of Photocatalytic TiO_2-Ag_2O/PESf Membrane for Methylene Blue Removal

This study proposed an effective method of methylene blue (MB) removal using a membrane with photocatalytic properties. The photocatalytic membrane, made of polyethersulfone (PESf) was incorporated with titanium dioxide (TiO_2) and silver oxide (Ag_2O) as the photocatalyst during the phase inversion process. TiO_2 was synthesized using sol-gel method before being modified by Ag_2O via wet pre-deposition method. The PESf/TiO_2/Ag_2O (PTA) membrane was characterized using scanning electron microscope coupled with elementary dispersion X-ray (SEM-EDX), X-ray diffraction analysis (XRD), attenuated Fourier transform infrared (ATR-FTIR), and ultraviolet visible near infrared (UV-vis NIR). The PTA membrane with 0.2 wt.% loading of TiO_2/Ag_2O shows uniform distribution of the photocatalyst materials and exhibits the highest degradation of MB at 85%. The TiO_2/Ag_2O presence was confirmed by the crystallinity analysis using XRD. UV-Vis NIR revealed that the band gap of TiO_2 reduced from 3.2 to 2.1 eV when modified with Ag_2O. This proved that membrane separation assisted with photocatalytic degradation is able to perform high degradation of MB dyes and has potential to be applied in industrial application.