SYNTHESIS, CHARACTERIZATION AND EVALUATION OF THE CATALYTIC ACTIVITY OF NIOBIUM COMPOSITE/CLAY ON OXIDATION REACTIONS
composite; vermiculite; bentonite; photocatalytic oxidation; niobium oxyhydroxide; AOP
Clays have been widely studied as catalyst supports because of their abundance in the Earth's crust and its low cost. In this work vermiculite and bentonite clays have been used as a support for the catalyst niobium oxyhydroxide and by the method of deposition-precipitation was obtained composites formed with these materials. The composites were characterized by XRD techniques, FTIR, EDS, SEM, XRF and UV-vis DRS. The XRD results indicated that there was a decrease in reflection intensity and a shift of both the clays’ main peak when NbO2OH is added to the structure. The FTIR analysis shows adsorption bands of both materials in the composites which indicates the composite formation and the SEM images also confirmed that modification. It was carried Oxidation tests and Photocatalytic Oxidation tests with the composites and Photocatalytic Oxidation Test showed better results. In this test, composite Nb/V0 showed a higher photocatalytic activity by removing 98% of color of methyl orange dye in 90 minutes while the reaction Nb/B0 materials removed only 63% over the same reaction time. This activity is due to the composite Nb/V0 have presented a smaller Band gap value than the composite Nb/B0.