Synthesis and photocatalytic activity of TiO2 nanowires in the degradation of p-aminobenzoic acid: A comparative study with a commercial catalyst

The photocatalytic degradation of p-aminobenzoic acid was studied using TiO2 nanowires as the catalyst synthesized through a hydrothermal procedure. The as-synthesized TiO2 nanowires were fully characterized by SEM, TEM, XRD and Raman with a very high surface area of 512 m2 g−1. The photocatalytic degradation of p-aminobenzoic acid was carried out under 180 min of constant radiation and the results were compared with P25 as commercial catalyst. Optimal experimental conditions were determined for TiO2 nanowires with a catalyst dosage of 1.0 g L−1 under acidic conditions with a 20 μM p-aminobenzoic acid solution obtaining 95% of degradation. Under similar experimental conditions comparative studies were performed obtaining 98% of degradation when P25 is employed. In both systems, a pseudo first order reaction was found to provide the best correlations, with constant rates of 2.0 × 10−2 min−1 and 2.4 × 10−2 min−1 for TiO2 nanowires and P25, respectively.