ABSTRACT
Photocatalysis can be a solution for the abatement of recalcitrant and/or emerging contaminants from water, such as phenol. The technology can also benefit from the properties of anodized TiO2 nanotubes (TNTs) to overcome the drawbacks of powder catalytic materials for industrial application.
In this work, with the objective of decreasing the photocatalysts production operational costs and develop a more sustainable process, the TNTs were obtained by anodization using aged electrolytes, and calcined at 450 ºC to obtain photoactive anatase crystallite phase. The samples presented morphology variations as the electrolyte reuse increased. The TNTs also revealed good photoactivity for phenol degradation, with the sample synthetized at the 10th electrolyte cycle showed a considerable performance decrease. Moreover, it was noted that the 10th cycle TNTs could not cover the entire Ti foil surface, although it was possible to observe a good degradation performance for the photocatalysts produced until the 9th cycle.
