Development of Fe/Ti02 Photocatalyst for Hydrogen Production from Water under Visible Light

Solar energy is concerned in order to generate hydrogen (Hz) from water with the
present of photocatalyst. The main problem is that current titanium dioxide (TiOz)
photocatalyst is only active in the ultraviolet (UV) region. In order to harvest the
abundance solar radiation consisting mainly of visible light, the efficiency of Ti02 has
to be increased by shifted the absorption edge of Ti02 to the visible region. In order to
increase the efficiency, the Ti02 photocatalyst is modified via metal doping
method. The production of hydrogen over iron-doped titanium dioxide (Fe/TiOz)
photocatalyst prepared by precipitation method has been studied. The iron (Fe) loading
varied from 0.1 to 1.0 wt"lo with different calcination temperature at 300°C, 400°C and
500°C. The photocatalyst was characterized by Thermogravimetric Analysis (TGA),
Diffuse Reflectance UV-Vis (DR UV-Vis), Fourier Transform Infrared (FTIR)
Spectroscopy, X-ray Diffraction (XRD), and Field Emission Scanning Electron
Microscopy (FE-SEM). The UV-vis absorption spectrum indicated that the absorption
edge of the photocatalyst red-shifted to around 600 nm. The lowest reduction of band
gap as a result of Fe doping was obtained at l.Owt% Fe/Ti02 calcined at 500°C (3.08
eV) compared to pure Ti02 (3.20 eV). Photocatalytic activity towards Hz generation
from water was investigated using a multiport photocatalytic reactor by using halogen
lamp that represented solar radiation. Under the irradiation with ultraviolet and visible
light, the photocatalyst showed good performance for Hz production at 1,0 wt"/o of Fe
loading calcined at 500°C with the production rate of 6.9 mL. The other
characterizations of the photocatalyst were explained throughout this report.