A Tremella-like Mesoporous Calcium Silicate Loaded by TiO2 with Robust Adsorption and Photocatalytic Degradation Capabilities

A titanium dioxide loaded tremella-like mesoporous calcium silicate hydrate (TiO2@CSH) with both adsorption and photocatalytic degradation activity was successfully prepared by a hydrothermal method combined with sol-gel strategy in two steps in this work. Tremella-shaped CSH provides abundant active sites for accommodating of TiO2, thus the corresponding TiO2@CSH achieved a high loading ratio of 36.73%. Such a special shaped TiO2@CSH exhibits excellent pre-enrichment capacity and photocatalytic degradation capacity for organic pollutants. Bisphenol A (BPA) removal experiments show that TiO2@CSH can remove 91.17% of BPA from aqueous solutions. Studies on removal mechanism suggest that BPA tends to bind on the interface between CSH and TiO2 and the pre-enrichment process conforms to the intraparticle diffusion model; and then, it is decomposed to harmless substances of CO2 and H2O during the photocatalytic process. The experimental results show that loading functional nanoparticles such as TiO2 on the surface of inorganic porous materials can endow inert porous materials with new functions such as photocatalytic degradation, which effectively expands the application range of inorganic porous materials.