Microplastic Pollutant Degradation in Water Using Modified TiO₂ Photocatalyst Under UV-Irradiation

Abstract

Abstract Modified TiO 2 photocatalyst has been widely studied on its ability to degrade pollutants in water. Nowadays, one of the water pollutants that significantly polluted water is microplastic. Photocatalyst TiO 2 can create an oxidizing agent to degrade microplastic pollutants but have a very high recombination rate of electrons and holes. By modifying TiO 2 with silver dopant using Photo-assisted Deposition (PAD) and Reduced Graphene oxide (RGO) using the ultrasonic radiation method, can highly increase the ability of TiO 2 catalyst. The modified catalyst was characterized by SEM-EDX and UV-Vis DRS to analyze the properties change of the composite. The performance of composites in degrading microplastic (polyethylene) was tested under UV radiation for 4 hours. The Ag/TiO 2 /RGO catalyst has a significantly high degradation percentage with 76% compared to pure TiO 2 and Ag/TiO 2 with degradation percentage of 56% and 68% respectively.