Adsorption and photocatalytic degradation of methyl orange imprinted composite membranes using TiO2/calcium alginate hydrogel as matrix

• TiO2/calcium alginate membrane was prepared by cross-linking the mixture of sodium alginate and TiO2 in aqueous solution.
• MO imprinted membrane (MIP) was synthesized using TiO2/calcium alginate as the matrix, silanes as the monomers.
• The adsorption capacity had significant effect on the degradation of MO.
• MIP degradated more MO than NIP did and gave good selectivity for the photodegradation of MO.

In this paper, molecularly imprinted TiO2/calcium alginate (T/CA) membrane was synthesized by using T/CA as supporting matrix, ethylenetri(β-methoxy) ethyoxysilane (KH-570) and γ-amidopropyltri- ethyoxysilane (KH-550) as functional monomers and methyl orange (MO) as template. The T/CA membranes and MO imprinted T/CA composite membranes were characterized by SEM, FT-IR and XRD. The adsorption and photocatalytic degradation of MO imprinted membranes were investigated. The results indicated that the process of dispersion in alginate and sol-gel of silanes did not have influence on the crystallization process of nano-TiO2 particles. MO was adsorbed more and faster by the molecularly imprinted membrane (MIP) than the non-imprinted membrane (NIP). Also, MIP showed good selectivity for photodegradation of MO when using MR as competitive molecules.

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