Removal of toxic mercury(II) from aquatic solutions by synthesized TiO2 nanoparticles Original Research Article

In this study, the adsorption and photocatalytic reduction of toxic mercury(II) from aqueous solutions at different pH values were investigated with the synthesized TiO2 nanoparticles. The synthesized materials were tested and characterized by TEM, XRD and BET methods. The results showed that high purity anatase TiO2 nanoparticles with an average diameter of 9.10 nm were produced by the acid catalyzed sol–gel method at 500 °C, and the specific surface areas of synthesized TiO2 nanoparticles were in excess of 200 m2 g− 1. The experimental results showed that the removal of mercury(II) in aqueous solutions were increased with an increase of pH in the range of 3.0–7.0, and the conversion of mercury(II) removal was more than 65% by TiO2 nanoparticles after 30 min under UV illumination. Kinetics models of the adsorption and photocatalytic reduction were also studied by the experimental measurements.