The textile and dye industries use a tremendous amount of organic dyes for the

production of various dyed products. These dyes end up in the wastewater and are
subsequently discharged into bodies of water, becoming a major contributor to the
growing problem in water contamination. Photocatalysis has the greatest potential
to organic contaminants present in wastewater effluents[1]. Among all
photocatalysts, titanium dioxide (TiO2), also known as titania, is known to be the
most effective. TiO2 is a stable photocatalyst and can resist chemical corrosion.
Previous studies have proven its effectiveness under UV light, however, industrial
application of this process as is seems to be impractical due to several factors, the
biggest of which is the cost of operation[2] especially since titanium dioxide can
only be activated under UV-light[3]. Due to this drawback, modifying the properties
of titania via doping was conducted to allow visible light irradiation, which is present
in enormous amounts in sunlight, to activate TiO2 and allow it to serve as a catalyst
for the degradation of tartrazine using visible light irradiation. The objective of this
study is to synthesize iron-doped titanium dioxide nanoparticles, determine its
crystallize phase, and identify the optimum process parameters that govern
photocatalytic efficiency, namely pH, solution concentration, and catalyst loading.
[1] Al-Dawery, S. K. (2013). Photo-catalyst degradation of tartrazine compound in
wastewater using TiO2 and UV light. Journal of Engineering Science and Technology,
8(6), 683691.
[2] Segneanu, A., Lazau, C., Orbeci, C., Vlazan, P., Bandas, C., & Grozescu, I. (2013).
Waste Water Treatment Methods. In Water Treatment. Intech.
[3] Zaleska, A. (2008). Doped-TiO2: A Review. Recent Patents on Engineering ENG, 2,
157-164.

Tartrazine is a synthetic yellow dye that is one of the numerous colored

contaminants present in wastewater effluents from the dye industry. The
photodegradation of such was investigated using iron-doped titanium dioxide
nanoparticles as photocatalyst under visible light. Titanium dioxide can only be
activated on UV-light. To circumvent this impediment, narrowing the bandgap
energy by doping was done and the optimum condition of effective process
parameters was studied by employing Response Surface Methodology (RSM)
in order to increase the efficiency of the photocatalytic process.
Characterization showed that the synthesized catalyst contains 98% anatase
and 2% iron, proving that iron was successfully impregnated to the catalyst.
The optimum values of the parameters to achieve the highest degradation of
tartrazine are 2 for initial pH, 0.45 g/L for catalyst loading, and 18.96 ppm for
initial concentration. The optimum process parameters were then applied in
the photocatalytic runs under sunlight irradiation and showed 100%
degradation of the contaminant after 20.33 minutes.