The removal of sodium dodecylbenzene sulfonate surfactant from water using silica/titania nanorods/nanotubes composite membrane with photocatalytic capability

This paper reports experimental results on removal of sodium dodecylbenzene sulfonate (SDBS), using silica/titania nanorods/nanotubes composite membrane with photocatalytic capability. This multifunctional composite membrane has been successfully prepared from colloidal X-silica/titania sols (X denotes molar percent of silica) by the sol-gel technique. The prepared nanorods/nanotubes composite membranes were characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscope (SEM), scanning probe microscope (SPM) and UV-vis diffuse reflectance spectra (DRS). XRD patterns confirmed that the embedding of amorphous silica into nanophase titania matrix helped to increase the thermal stability of titania and control the size of titania particles. The small size titania particles with anatase phase played an important role in formation of silica/titania nanorods/nanotubes composite membranes with photocatalytic capability. The percentage of anatase phase titania reached 93% when 20%-silica/titania nanorods/nanotubes composite membrane calcined at 400 °C for 2 h. Most (95%) of the pore volume was located in mesopores of diameters ranging from 1.4 to 10 nm. The experimental results showed that the removal of SDBS achieved 89% after 100 min by combining the photocatalysis with membrane filtration techniques. Although the SDBS was not completely decomposed by photocatalysis, the degradation of the SDBS helped to enhance composite membrane flux and prevent membrane fouling. It was possible to treat successfully surfactant wastewater using multifunctional silica/titania nanorods/nanotubes composite membrane by means of a continuous process; this could be interesting for industrial applications.