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A new approach to obtain a heterogeneous photocatalytic material with gold nanoparticles and TiO 2 semiconductor was performed exploiting the reducing ability of acetylacetone, a chemical present in the TiO 2 paste formulation. Gold/TiO 2 heterogeneous catalyst supported on polypropylene [PP@Au-TiO 2 ] A was prepared; composition, structure and morphology of this new material were defined by using UV–Vis spectroscopy, Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM), Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM), X-ray diffraction (XRD), X-ray Fluorescence (XRF), Raman Spectroscopy, Photoluminescence and Diffuse Reflectance Spectroscopy. The new material was tested in the photocatalytic degradation of Alizarin Red S in water solution, as target pollutant, under visible light and correlated with structural and spectroscopic characterizations. [PP@Au-TiO 2 ] A showed higher photocatalytic activity respect to pure [PP@TiO 2 ] A with an improvement of photodegradation kinetic. The best performance was obtained using [PP@Au-TiO 2 ] A sample with 0.006 wt.% of Au and the photocatalytic improvement was correlated with the band gap energy decrease of photocatalyst. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]