International Journal of Photoenergy

Yu Niu ¹, Pan Huang ¹, Fuying Li ², Kai Yang ³, Jinbei Yang ¹, Renzhang Wang ², Cheng Lin ¹, Ting Qiu ¹

Affiliations
1 School of Chemical Engineering, Fuzhou University, Fuzhou 350116, CN
2 Collaborative Innovation Center of Clean Coal Gasification Technology, Sanming University, Sanming 365004, CN
3 Research Institute of Photocatalysis, State Key Laboratory of Photocatalysis on Energy and Environment, Fuzhou University, Fuzhou 350002, CN

Abstract

TiO₂ has been widely used as a key catalyst in photocatalytic reactions; it also shows good catalytic activity for esterification reactions. Different sulfated M-TiO₂ nanoparticles (M = Ag, Au, Rh, and Pt) were prepared by photodeposition and ultrasonic methods. The results show that the noble metal nanoparticles, which were loaded onto a TiO₂ surface, slightly affected the crystal phase and particle size of TiO₂. Among all the catalysts, SO₄²⁻/Au-TiO₂ exhibited the best catalytic activity in the esterification reaction for the synthesis of citric acid n-butyl acetate and in the decomposition of methyl orange, as confirmed by a high conversion rate of up to 98.2% and 100% degradation rate, respectively. This can be attributed to an increase in the Lewis acidity of the catalyst and increased separation efficiency of electron-hole pairs. This superior catalyst has great potential applications in esterification reactions and waste water treatments.

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