A novel porous composite structure of titania nanowires grown on titanium foam for electrochemical degradation of methyl orange in water

•Orderly arrayed titania nanowires were prepared on an open-cell titanium foam.•This composite structure can be efficient for electrolysis of organic pollutants in water.•The high efficiency of electrolysis is mainly due to a greatly increased active area.

An ordered titania nanowire array grown on titanium foam is presented, and the resultant porous composite structure has been demonstrated to be quite effective as an electrode for electrolyzing organic pollutants in water, with the aqueous solution of methyl orange (MO) as the simulated wastewater. The titanium foam with about 88% porosity and about 1.5 mm sized pores was produced by a slurry impregnation method, on which the titania nanowires grew by a hydrothermal process. The X-ray diffraction (XRD) analytical results indicated the rutile phase for the titania nanowires after a heat-treatment at 500 °C for 4 h. Using this porous system as anode and the nickel foam as cathode, an installation of wastewater treatment was assembled to investigate the work efficiency to purify the simulated wastewater by electrolysis. The experimental result showed the degradation could achieve more than 90% in 20 mg/L MO solution during electrolysis under just a low anode voltage.