Photocatalytic Degradation of Reactive Dyes Over Titanates.

MTiO₃ (M = Sr, Ca, Ba and Pb) catalysts were synthesized by polymeric precursor method and characterized by using various instrumental techniques such as X-ray diffraction (XRD), UV-diffuse reflectance spectroscopy (UV-DRS), Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM), Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS). TiO₂ were also synthesized by sol-gel method and used for the optimization of reaction parameters such as catalyst weight, dye concentration and pH in the photocatalytic degradation of reactive dyes such as reactive blue 198 (RB 198), reactive black 5 (RB 5) and reactive yellow 145 (RY 145) under UV irradiation. MTiO₃ (M = Sr, Ca, Ba and Pb) catalysts were evaluated towards the photocatalytic decolourization of RB 198, RB 5 and RY 145 under optimized reaction conditions. Among the different metal titanates, strontium titanate showed the highest decolourization (≈90%) of all the three reactive dyes under UV irradiation at 120 minutes and also found to be active under visible irradiation as it decolourises the dyes in about 450 minutes. The degradation rate of strontium titanate was monitored by TOC analyzer. Kinetic studies of the photocatalytic degradation of reactive dyes confirmed that the reaction followed the pseudo first order kinetics.