Synthesis of hierarchical hollow sodium titanate microspheres and their application for selective removal of organic dyes

Ye Zhang; Gongyi Li; Junming Liu; Tao Wang; Xue Wang; Bin Liu; Yunling Liu; Qisheng Huo; Zengyong Chu

doi:10.1016/j.jcis.2018.05.069

Synthesis of hierarchical hollow sodium titanate microspheres and their application for selective removal of organic dyes

J Colloid Interface Sci. 2018 Oct 15:528:109-115. doi: 10.1016/j.jcis.2018.05.069. Epub 2018 May 22.

Authors

Ye Zhang¹, Gongyi Li¹, Junming Liu², Tao Wang², Xue Wang², Bin Liu², Yunling Liu², Qisheng Huo², Zengyong Chu³

Affiliations

¹ College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, National University of Defense Technology, Changsha 410073, PR China.
² State Key Laboratory of Inorganic Synthesis and Preparative Chemistry, College of Chemistry, Jilin University, Changchun 130012, PR China.
³ College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, National University of Defense Technology, Changsha 410073, PR China. Electronic address: chuzy@nudt.edu.cn.

PMID: 29843058
DOI: 10.1016/j.jcis.2018.05.069

Abstract

Titanate-based materials are attractive inorganic adsorbents for wastewater treatment. In this study, hierarchical hollow sodium titanate microspheres (HHSTMs) were successfully synthesized via a template-assisted method. Silica microspheres were selected as hard templates, with a uniformly smooth TiO₂ shell first grown onto the surface of the SiO₂ cores. Then, through an alkaline hydrothermal process, the silica core was removed and the TiO₂ shell gradually converted into a sodium titanate shell with a preserved morphology. The as-synthesized HHSTMs are constructed from twined nanobelts, with a high surface area of 308 m² g^-1. A typical organic dye, methylene blue, was employed to investigate the adsorption properties of the HHSTMs. The adsorption process matched well with the Langmuir isothermal model, with the maximum adsorption capacity of methylene blue reaching 443 mg g^-1. Moreover, the resulting HHSTMs can be used to selectively capture of methylene blue from a cationic-anionic dye binary system due to their negatively charged surface. All adsorption processes were very fast and could complete in ten minutes.

Keywords: Hierarchical hollow microspheres; Organic dyes; Selective adsorption; Sodium titanate.