A statistical experimental design to degradation of aqueous methyl orange Solution with photocatalyst of Ti/TiO2 nanotube array

A statistical experimental design to the degradation of aqueous methyl orange, by using the Ti/TiO2 nanotube array photocatalyst, under UV irradiation, was investigated. Concentration of methyl orange(5mg/L,15mg/L,25mg/L), catalytic time (0.5h,1h,1.5h) and UV light source (6w,11w,15w) were selected as major operating variables. To investigate the effects of variables to degradation rate, the statistical experiment of Box-Behnken design(BBD) and Response Surface methodology(RSM) was employed. Regression analysis showed that the experiment data accorded with the predicted values obtained from quadratic regression equation in BBD with R-Squared of 0.9806 and F-value of 39.34.