Investigation of Photocatalytic Activity of Chitosan/Poly(vinyl alcohol)/TiO2/Boron Nanocomposites

In the current work, a series of chitosan/poly(vinyl alcohol)/tio2/boron nanocomposites (cs/p/ti-b) were prepared and their activity in the photocatalytic removal of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug (ibuprofen (ibp)) were evaluated for the first time. the nanocomposites were characterized by scanning electron microscopy (sem), x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (xps), fourier transform infrared spectrum (ft-ir), and thermogravimetric analysis (tg-dtg). tga thermograms showed the enhanced thermal stability of nanocomposites with increasing ti-b content. in the photocatalytic experiments, the effects of ti-b content, catalyst dosage and initial concentration were discussed and a suitable photodegradation process for enhanced removal was proposed. the photocatalytic removal of ibp increased with increasing ti-b ratio and the kinetic rate constant of ti-b increased from 4.516 × 10−2 min-1 (for raw ti-b) to 5.346 × 10−2 min-1 (for cs/p/ti-b/1). this increment could be attributed to the decreased recombination rate of the photo-generated electron-hole pairs.